


Damnation and Absolution

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: And Then There Were None (TV 2015)
Genre: A lot of murder, Atonement - Freeform, Cool motive still murder, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, POV First Person, Period-Typical Homophobia, Self-Acceptance, Self-Hatred, in which Blore survives the island, side everyone else
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-26 16:39:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 27,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12561660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: You can't bury your regrets and mistakes and think they'll never come back to haunt you... but if you live with them long enough, and live with them honestly, you might be able to lay them to rest.Bill's problem is, he could never be honest about his mistakes. And if he can't lay them to rest, he'll be the one buried by them.The first chapter- the immediate aftermath of Landor's murder.





	1. Ruby

**Author's Note:**

> This is entirely self-indulgent on the part of the author. I'm obsessed with a miniseries from two years ago... I'm not expecting this to be one of my more-read things. But I was reminded that sometimes content for old/small fandoms is the most-appreciated, and so I'm sharing it properly all edited-up here, instead of just in midnight chunks on my blog.

It’s not the first time I’d called on Reg to get me through a spot of trouble, as he’d promised he would. It’s the first time there’s been a dead body at the heart of it.

 

“I’m going to take care of this.” He’d said, with all his usual calm, the poor boy down the hall and me half in the sink trying to get the blood off. “It’s going to be all right. Walk me through this– I need to know what happened before I can make this go away.”

 

“You shouldn’t have to make this go away.” I scrub at my face and feel like it’s bloody still. Wish I could tear it off entirely. Don’t know how to look at myself, but then I never did. New face wouldn’t change much. “You shouldn’t have to clean up my messes. Hell, Reg! This– this isn’t like the other messes you’ve made go away, this is– this is–”

 

“Walk me through it.” He repeats. He shifts his weight, and folds his arms, and waits, like he always does. He’s solid, Reg– he’s got broad shoulders, just a bit soft around the middle, he’s comforting. If a man like Reg says he’s got things handled, you just want to believe him. He’s calm about these things, and you just feel protected. Anyone would, anyone would naturally feel calm around Reg, naturally feel good to be named among his friends, except there’s no feeling calm now, about this.

 

“You know how people say they just saw red? Never happened to me before. Always thought it was just one of them metaphors, something… These buggers, they say ‘I just saw red, like it weren’t even me doing it’, and I always said ‘naw, you know exactly what you done’, but he looked at me like he knew me, Reg. He looked at me like he recognized me. It flashed across his face, like, and it’s like this curtain descended, and I saw red.”

 

“And it weren’t even you doing it.” Reg nods. If it had been someone else found me, I’d’ve agreed. It’s Reg, so I don’t.

 

“It was me every second.” I say, my voice barely coming out. With anyone else, I’d say it wasn’t, I’d say I blanked, and I wish I had. But Reg said ‘walk me through it’ and I couldn’t lie to Reg. Sinned enough for one night, to lie to Reg on top of it all.

 

“Just came on like that? Not like you.”

 

“He looked at me like he knew me!” I shout, gesturing wildly, splashing pink water around the room. I see it rolling down the tile walls and I could be sick. And I wish Reg could understand and I’m glad he doesn’t. I don’t even know me. “Reg, and you know– I mean, like he knew me. And him with his, with-- Bugger me, and he’s probably, he probably goes to art school or some such, and can you imagine me running with posh people? Can you imagine me going to art school? I mean I never would, or, but at any posh school? Or in any of those– and he tells me maybe there was a misunderstanding at the tea room, and–”

 

“What tea room?” Reg asks. His brow furrows, and panic shoots through me. I feel clammy and I don’t know how much is that I’m wet through from the sink and how much is the cold sweat I must be in now.

 

“I don’t know. Where he thought he knew me, maybe.” I say. My cardinal rule broken. If murder didn’t put me beyond salvation, this has. But Reg won’t ask around about tea rooms that don’t matter, and even if he did, he wouldn’t get the kind of answer that would lead him right, and even if he did that, it's my job, isn't it? My job to know some things, and that's all. “Posh people, can you picture me in a tea room, either? About as likely as art school, and I only ever been to a museum once. Got sick after ten minutes. Sick of it, bored.”

 

Sick-sick, it had come on sudden and I’d been clammy and wobbly, it had been what, ten years back? Maybe not so much, but maybe. I still remember the painting I had been looking at when the sick feeling hit me, like it’s burned into my brain. _Ruby, Gold, and Malachite_. Heard art was supposed to move you, didn’t think it hit you like a steam train to the gut and made you want to vomit in an alley.

 

“But that’s not why you did it.” Reg presses. “It can’t be, I know you. And that’s not any reason…”

 

Classist insecurities aside, sure. No reason to kill a boy, kill a man. I could play upon insecurity all day if I wanted to, but I don’t want to. I’m not an eat-the-rich sort. If I could explain the feeling to Reg, I would. The crawling revulsion, the feeling of being turned inside out, or mounted like an insect to be studied… the way it was only an instant and yet I felt…

 

“There was an attempt at a bribe.” Reg says, and now he’s telling me what happened. As if I had blanked it all out. For a moment I wonder if I had, and filled it in with things that never did happen. I stare at him blankly. I’m wet and shivering and still bloody.

 

He had talked some, nervous, but it hadn’t been a bribe. Maybe it could’ve been if I’d asked for one, but that kind of dirty… Worse than murder, maybe not, but I guess tonight I learn where my lines are drawn.

 

“There was an attempt at a bribe.” Reg repeats slowly, and the tumblers click into place. “And you panicked.”

 

“I don’t want to have panicked!” I stammer. The word catches in my throat. I keep panicking, but I don’t want to have. I don’t want the word ‘bribe’ to sound oily like this, I don’t want anyone to picture me in the position, to picture me tempted and panicking.

 

“Then don’t panic now.” Reg says. “Look, everyone does sometimes. At least there can’t be any question of what your answer was.”

 

 _Ruby, Gold, and Malachite_. It was the same feeling I got in that moment. But when a painting looks through you and tells you it knows where you live, all you can do is run out of the gallery, and when a man does, when you panic...

 

“Can’t there be? A bribe, Reg, bugger me! But you can’t tell people that was it. You can’t tell people I panicked. Like I was, was frightened, or– I mean I don’t know how it happened. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before!”

 

Reg’s hand closes around the back of my neck, firm and warm. It’s a gesture that says ‘I’ll fix it’, a gesture that says ‘I’m on your side, Billy Boy, Billy Boy’. It’s a gesture that someone else might deserve, but not me.

 

Billy Boy, Billy Boy. Reg always says it in twos. Sings snatches of the rhyme sometimes, and laughs all soft and says it gets stuck in your head if you've been an Orangeman. And each time something in it makes me wish he wouldn’t, but it’s not Reg that bothers me. The words, or maybe just that there’s an inherent childishness in being called ‘Billy Boy’. Reg himself, the attention, that’s different. I’d weep to hear it now just for the reassurance of it. Let him quote me any silly rhyme he likes, let him tell me I’ve been too long at the fair.

 

“If no one else sees you… maybe you weren’t there.”

 

“Maybe I weren’t– everyone knows I was there. Reg, bugger me! Everyone knows I was there!”

 

“And you left, and someone else came along. You change. Get rid of your clothes. And I’ll get a doctor who understands the way the world works sometimes. And we’ll fix this.” Reg is firm. “We’ll fix this.”

 

And so I let him fix it.


	2. Gold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soldiers' Island, and everything that happens there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a monster, and for that I apologize, because it's a million times . It required painstaking rewatching both for blocking and dialogue-- for the few bits that aren't just left in Blore's head. As well as a few ideas of my own, for things unseen.

Of the lady I formed no opinion, beyond the fact that she seemed quiet and upright and utterly uninteresting.

 

Of the gentlemen, two were likewise respectable but uninteresting persons-- one whom I knew something of and one whom I did not. The other two made me uncomfortable, straight off. 

 

It is always the way with people, though, isn’t it? If you can’t be comfortable with yourself, how can you be comfortable with others? The sort of men I feel most comfortable with aren’t the sort I could relax around-- I couldn’t relax around anyone. You’re always being someone you’re not. Always putting on the mask, even if it’s not the same mask, person to person, day to day. Around the men who came from the same place I did, it’s a sodding tiring act, but it’s an act I’ve got good enough at to pull off. 

 

You learn to trust the right types of people to react the right way, but then there’s people you don’t know and you can’t trust. 

 

And then there’s  _ him _ , and all I know about him is I like him least of all.

 

Which isn’t fair of me, ‘cause on the surface there’s nothing about him which is at all objectionable. He’s built like Reg, like Reg was, few years back, before everything went wrong and before he kicked it. And I know it’s not fair of me to take a dislike to a man for not being Reg, for having the set of his shoulders, for having his rosy face, his moustache. He don’t dress like Reg used to or smile like him, but he’s tall as Reg was and solid. But Reg was salt of the earth, and this stranger, I don’t know. Reeks of middle class, but then they mostly all do. That or better, except the girl and maybe one of the men who could be pretending as much as I am.

 

I keep looking at him, because of the similarity. It’s comforting and wrong all at once, that. He and Reg could be twins, hell, if Reg had ever had a brother with middle-class aspirations I’d think this was him, but Reg’s only brothers were by choice.

 

It’s an uncomfortable trip, this man who could never be Reg across from me. It bothers me he isn’t, he’s dressed up enough it makes me feel unsettled, uncertain, and yet out of everyone I suppose it’s also because he looks like Reg that makes me drawn to him most of all. The familiarity. That’s only natural, I suppose. 

 

Besides, there’s only so many faces to look at, or the horizon, or down. There’s worse faces than his, or faces you’d have to crane your neck to see, and him seated right across.

 

I don’t enjoy the ride out, or the hike up to the house, don’t enjoy anything about it. Don’t enjoy that the Owenses aren’t there and that there’s no telling if or when I’ll have the chance to pull Owen aside and ask for some bloody clarification. I don’t know the man from Adam but Davis has to. It would have been nice to be able to work this out ahead of time together, but here I am thrown in with everybody else in the world and no Owen.

 

It’s exhausting to be Davis already and I’ve barely begun. To be fair, it’s exhausting enough just to be me, anyway, so I might as well be someone else. But it’s a lot to get straight with no one here to help with my cover and explain to me what the hell is going on. 

 

By the time I’m in my room to dress for dinner, I’ve got opinions, at least, and I form the rest of the opinions I need as we mill about waiting on the gong.

 

Marston- don’t trust him at all. I mean, look at the man, just… look at him. It’s the set of his jaw, or the way he holds his face. Not the features themselves, of which of course I’ve no opinion at all. Only the way he holds himself. Posh. Never had to work and wouldn’t know how if he suddenly found himself in the position to. Just goes where he likes and does what he likes, and not a thought in his head about common decency, sometimes you just know when you see a man he’s not a decent sort. There are respectable folks in the upper orders, but not him, I know his type. Seen boys like that pay off two years’ hard labour with a cheque and not blink at the cost. But you let ‘em because they’ve all got some uncle who’s a judge or else sitting in the House of Lords, so you take the sodding cheque and off they go without a single lesson learned, thinking the whole world’s their tea room. Pissing away everything decent in life. 

 

Lombard- trust him even less. Shifty bastard, and don’t for a minute think he hasn’t skated by on looks and charm when by rights he should have seen consequences. He’s too young to have gone to war, but he looks like a man who’s just got back from one. Suppose there’s men who do go overseas and hire themselves out, but I’d put money on him being a bit more  _ domestic _ about it. The only one I’ve bothered to take the time to make any physical note on, for the others are not likely to be that sort of trouble, and notes can always be made later should things change.

 

Armstrong- It’s unfair of me to take against him for reminding me of Reg and I can’t see any other reason. My expertise may have been wanted in some capacity here this week-end, but I can’t see him being the reason. I can’t rule anything out, but the feeling I get about him, it’s not based on anything but random chance. We have the chance to chat a bit out on the veranda and based on that I have to say he seems an entirely likable man.

 

MacArthur- As far as I can see, wholly respectable. Cuts a fine figure even in advancing years, carries himself the way a man ought. I imagine I would like him perfectly well. Our paths would never have crossed under other circumstances, but why shouldn’t I get along with him now that they have? And if he’d never chance to meet Blore, why wouldn’t he get along with Davis?

 

Brent- Seems quite respectable. That sort of woman, you know… entirely respectable. Maybe with some social aspirations, but there’s two sorts where that’s concerned. There’s the climbers, out for themselves, and always going to betray themselves when they get too far ahead. And then there’s the sort who wants a more respectable company. Genteel, maybe charitable-- usually charitable, these types, not in it for themselves. Never out to have tea with the queen, just looking to breathe a more rarified air now and then, and quiet and polite about it when they get there. Harmless sort. Which I imagine she is based on first impressions, she’s not working class to start with. Not that that’s any indication, but if she’s reaching for something better, she’s not reaching far. She smacks of finishing school, that one. If she wants to rub elbows with a better sort of people, well, that’s where the opportunities lie when you’re in charitable work. Ladies’ church groups or some such, she’s that type. Organizes the flowers or takes home the top prize for sponge cake when there’s one of them church fairs. Not crude about her aspirations.

 

Wargrave- A hard man but an honorable one by all counts. Maybe a bit of a sadist, never was such a hanging judge in all the time I’ve been on the force, to hear it told. Never met the man personally, or I might not be in a good position to be Davis. But I’ve heard plenty from men who have. No one I know has much to say against him. We’re all on the side of law and order, after all. No one I know speaks too warmly, either. Not the type to be warm about. But to meet him in the flesh he seems a harmless, polite old chap. With luck, the type to let a little social slip pass graciously. Maybe the rumors I’ve heard of him have always been exaggerated, or maybe stepping down has improved him. Plenty of men who have hard reputations when they’re working turn out to be right pussycats when they take retirement. No shame in that at all-- no, that’s a thing to look forward to, expect. Not having to be so hard, not having a life in your hands. That’d take a weight off any man, make him better.

 

Claythorne- I haven’t bothered to form much opinion of her, honestly. She’s the secretary and surely the Owenses have already formed an opinion of her, as they’ve surely formed an opinion of the Rogerses. 

 

Well, the difference there is, the Rogerses don’t dine with the guests. Whether that means I ought to develop opinions on Miss Claythorne, I don’t know.

 

I suppose I like her. If only because I suppose I’d know how to be around her, a bit. She’s not like the others. Maybe she’s not like me, either, but she’s still a secretary. Keeping an eye on the guests until such time as her employers arrive, if not in the same capacity I am, and maybe that’s why she’s at the table, or maybe to make Miss Brent more comfortable. No way to properly seat everyone when it’s so unbalanced, but I don’t mind it. I don’t mind Miss Claythorne, but I can’t be soft, either. Can’t be the man I’m used to being around people in our social brackets when I’ve got to be Davis still-- that’s the biggest thing I can’t be. But she don’t talk too common, not so much as to throw off the posh accent I’ve put on. Suppose she does the same, when she’s got posh employers, sands off the rough edges ‘til she sounds nice and proper. All things considered I can’t say I mind that about her.

 

I don’t mind being next to Dr. Armstrong, for the more he speaks, the less he seems like the ghost of Reg come back to haunt me, the more he seems like his own man entirely. It’s enough for me he takes against Marston, for we can agree upon that. He’s an upright sort, Armstrong, and I don’t for a moment blame him losing his temper, I don’t for a moment take against him for that. Not the way Marston’s behaving, shameless, that smug look on his face.

 

Someone ought to teach him a lesson about how to behave to people, that Marston. Half a mind to invite him outside and pop him one, except that’s not something Davis would do, and if Dr. Armstrong can keep the peace and shake hands, however reluctant, I certainly can. 

 

It’s an admirable restraint. I do like Armstrong more and more through dinner. Restraint’s no easier for him than for me, way that muscle at his jaw’s jumping throughout the whole bloody scene, but he pulls himself back in and behaves a gentleman anyhow, is how it seems to me, close as we’re sitting. I can see how his hand trembles when he’s upset and how he’d rather hide it, and the strain behind his smile now and then, and I feel for him for that. And the teetotalling hasn’t escaped my notice, and whether it’s to do with the rest he says he needs to take or the tremor in his hand or the muscle at his jaw that had tensed up when Marston suggested he wasn’t fit to be on the road.

 

Maybe in the past, he wasn’t, but if that’s the case, he’s amended his behavior since. Exactly what I mean by admirable restraint. Admirable. If there was ever a problem, he’s taken the proper steps to see it won’t be a problem again.

 

Dessert’s subdued a bit after that, but at least the meal’s nearly done at that point anyway. It’s easier without the ladies present. No one has to watch his language so closely, or be careful what stories he tells. 

 

Well, I do, but when ain’t I watching myself close with people? Just trying out a new role, that’s all. Armstrong passes the drink on to me, and I do him the favor of taking it with no fuss or notice made. I stick to agreeing, laughing and nodding. There’s too many things can out a man, when he’s playing at being above his station.  I’m playing way above my station tonight.

 

Lombard’s on the quiet side. Shifty-eyed. He’s playing above his station, too, I’d bet money on it. Not the way Miss Brent may be, by small degrees and harmlessly. Not like Miss Claythorne and me, I would hope-- as part of a rum sort of a job and on the suggestion of our employers to keep folks more at ease. I’d hope he’s no one the Owenses have set any stock in, shady as he is. They might have told me so if they were, too, but then, Mr. Owens wasn’t so forthcoming in his letter. A list of who’d be in attendance but nothing more than that to go on. Looking up background information was up to me entirely, and outside the basics of MacArthur’s career and what I knew about Wargrave, weren’t much I was able to find without overstepping some boundaries. This wasn’t part of my regular duties, after all. The less anyone at work knew about my taking an odd job over my holiday the better, but after all, I’d been asked for personally, and it weren’t money I could turn down. I make an honest living, and not a bad one, but money like that, I could look at a small house and a proper garden with it-- to a retirement somewhere nice, one of these days, a quiet place with green meadows… with trees.

 

The little patch I’ve got, there ain’t nothing wrong with. And I ain’t got the time to work at more land than that, sure. But a man’s got to look towards his future. A man’s got to think about what he wants. It’s not greedy to want a little bit more. It’s not greedy to think about the day you retire and realize you’ll go mad if you’re stuck in the same dingy flat where you live, with only so much as you can call your own. Well, I got a retirement to put towards. I got as much a right to a future as any man, and I ain’t going to settle for the drab one I got. No telling what hopes I have of rising up honest in the world… there’s too many what could play the game better than I ever could. Ain’t played the game since Reg, and there’s only so far you can get on honest sweat in any job. So why not take a little side job over the holiday? Why not make for certain I’ve got something to put away for the future?

 

MacArthur likes talking enough, once the ladies aren’t present, that I don’t think anyone notices much if I’m too quiet, or if Lombard is. Armstrong is mostly genial, Wargrave the same, and Marston just likes to hear himself talk, but he’s gracious enough to egg on anyone who’s got a story. Mind, however gracious he is, I still agree with Armstrong, he is a little shit. He’s gracious, but there’s no honesty in it. There’s nothing in him except for charm, and he can only charm so far. Armstrong’s not forgotten being run off the road, and I’m not about to let myself be charmed by Martson’s sort.

 

There’s a sound that cuts off. The laughter doesn’t stop, but it’s a sound I know. It’s a sound Armstrong must know, and MacArthur, for all that they’re too caught up in dirty jokes and such to pay it mind. I give a quick glance around the room and spot the loudspeaker, but there’s nothing more than the squawk over it. At least, for a good stretch, there’s not. 

 

When it comes back on, it’s with a voice, and if the voice is Owen, I’d like more than ever to know what he’s damn well playing at. I see Armstrong stricken by the accusation, but there’s accusations enough to go around. 

 

_ Landor _ . I see him in my mind’s eye, feel ready to shake apart as I get up to my feet to follow everyone else in tracking the voice down. I feel the creeping sick feeling I’d felt then, having his eyes on me. I’d pushed him out of my mind for so long, done my damnedest to forget the truth of what happened that night and now the memory burns. 

 

The Rogerses are on the record, too, and Miss Claythorne. However the Owenses set it up and for what reason, we’re all in it. What motive, I don’t know, and I haven’t got much time to puzzle it out before Marston’s accosting me.

 

I’m still reeling from my own accusation, and the memories dredged up, and as much as I’d love to wipe every trace of ‘smug, rich little arsehole’ off of Marston’s face, I think about the bloody pulp I’d made of Landor and I’m temporarily frozen. I can’t, not until he’s told to lay off and I’m able to shove him away, weaker than I might have liked. Last thing I want to look is weak-- it’s too late to hope for keeping my cover, but even if I’m stuck looking duplicitous I won’t look weak as well.

 

Whatever sort of dirty trickery is going on here, I’m best placed to be in charge of getting to the bottom of it anyway. I don’t see any other officers of the law, do I? And we know there ain’t no bloody phone on the island, so why shouldn’t I take charge until Narracott comes and we can sort this mess properly? 

 

Leastaways there’s a doctor in the house. He’s seeing to Mrs. Rogers now, sure, and he might have a split lip to stitch up by the time Narracott gets here, too. I didn’t take a full swing at Marston but I’m not ruling it out, and I’m definitely not ruling out Lombard.

 

Lombard! What a right bastard he is! ‘Instinct’ my fucking arse, there weren’t no ‘Davis’ on the record is how he knew it, more fool me for even asking. There weren’t no Davis on the record and there weren’t no Blore introduced earlier so of course someone’d put the pieces together. He don’t got to pretend it’s so impressive, pretend he’s such a keen study of human nature! You want to talk about instinct, I’ve had Lombard’s number since I saw him and the only thing surprises me is he did his killing in East Africa and not Ulster. 

 

Ain’t all of us the same kind of guilty. I know that before the sob stories start. I know what I done. I know how guilty I am. Now maybe some of these, it was accidental. Friendly fire, malpractice-- hell, Marston ran Armstrong off the road, who’s to say he hasn’t done it before and in a more treacherous area? Maybe there was a case of self-defense in it for someone. Lombard’s a stone cold killer and I don’t doubt that. And I know what I done. And I know about the judge.

 

Heard enough about Seton to know I was glad not to know any more, I’ll say that. Don’t like how the judge has gone since the record at all. Most are predictable enough and they play it out as I’d be prepared for, only Marston really surprised me and only the judge seems… I don’t know. 

 

Too calm, but then, I know I done it so I believe at least some of the others have. Wargrave knows he had every sodding reason to send Seton to the hangman, so why shouldn’t he think anyone else here, the whole story would absolve them? But the whole story don’t absolve me. And I’d like to think I’m not in a house full of cold-blooded killers, but I know there’s one or two here must be, to be lumped in with the likes of me.

 

The likes of me… The kind of man I am is something I’ve avoided thinking about successfully for long enough that maybe I should have seen it all crashing down.

 

We gather for drinks, gather so everyone can pretend to be shocked. Pretend to be innocent. Lombard ain’t pretending, and he’s not ready to be suckered in for anyone else. I’m not about to cop to what I done when we’re all still playing at the thin veneer of society.

 

Where the Rogerses are concerned, I don’t know. Where Miss Brent is concerned, well. Maybe she believes Rogers on account of she’s a good Christian woman what knows how it’s like to be maligned… maybe she don’t, and she wants the same doubt extended to her. Because the type of woman to say she believes in this sort of goodness, in the face of all we just heard, well… she wouldn’t be a murderer, now would she?

 

Where Dr. Armstrong is concerned… I don’t know. Hearing the record, I took into account it could easily be a simple mistake, his line of work. But the way he talks about it now, the way it strains him, I don’t know. Am I wanting to be soft on him because he reminds me of Reg, or am I trying to be hard on him because he doesn’t remind me enough? I can’t go trusting there’s no more to it just because there’s a good story covering his arse. My personal opinion of the man is all over the place. The fact my personal opinions don’t matter doesn’t stop them from complicating things.

 

I’m inclined to believe MacArthur. A lot of things could happen to a man in a war. No matter how the bloke died, he’d have someone waiting back home ready to pin the blame on the commanding officer just because they’d never have the chance to bugger off to the continent and track down the jerry what done it if it weren’t friendly fire. ‘Inclined to believe’ don’t mean ‘trust’. A whole lot of unknowns just got thrown into the mix and spoiled every angle I was prepared for, and I’m not about to trust anyone unless things are well and truly settled. Not ‘til I know who to be to these people and how to play it. All that’s happened, I’m still floundering. Maybe it’s a sick joke, but it’s taken away the persona I had to hide behind and no matter who I am now, well. Trust’s a two-way street, ideally, and won’t nobody trust me for lying to them. Can’t be helped and can’t be blamed, whatever trust I’d have had as a proper authority figure is undercut by the whole Davis act.

 

Here, at least, Wargrave says exactly what I’d expected him to, and I don’t ask about what that knowledge was. Knew one of the boys who’d collected that evidence, and him I’d believe, on the topic of Seton being one for the noose. Whether I could trust Wargrave may be another matter, and whether he’d trust me. 

 

I hope he does. And why shouldn’t he, or any of them? Why shouldn’t any of them take the story I’ve been telling myself since the night Reg helped me sweep Landor under the rug? 

 

I’m inclined to believe Miss Claythorne, she seems distraught enough at it. For the meantime, I’m inclined to accept it was an accident, for now. And I’m inclined to agree with Armstrong, if this is a joke, the person who made it is off their nutter. Or… I’m more inclined to think he made a human error, that he’s not a killer, or not the way I am. Because I don’t think this is a joke. It’d be a sick one if it were, and I don’t know what it is, but I don’t think it’s a joke.

 

I believe Lombard, of course. I avoid his gaze when it sweeps the room, but I believe him. He’s not embellishing. No sane man would, and he may be sick, but he’s a sane sick. I suppose I’d know. And I suppose…

 

I suppose he’d see me. Not the way Landor’d seen me. Not like that, if I’ve one thing I can be thankful for. He wouldn’t see that. But he’d see me for what I done, the same way I saw him. He’d see that dark spot on me. 

 

As far as Marston is concerned, I’m not bloody surprised. I knew him, I knew him from the moment I saw him, practically dressed for tennis on a bloody island. Knew he didn’t have any idea what consequence was. Knew he’d get away with murder and somehow think himself the victim because it left a stain on his necktie. I’d laugh, if it wasn’t kids. Bloody hell, kids! And he only remembers now, kids! 

 

There’s a moment, when he starts coughing on his drink, that I think ‘serve him right if he’d choke on it’, and then he chokes on it. I mean, then he really does, and if things weren’t bad enough… And Armstrong drops him and I fumble catching him, but I grab his legs to haul him off Miss Claythorne and it’s Lombard grabs his front and gets him turned over.

 

We shouldn’t let him be on his back, I know that much, and I may have lied about Landor but I’ve chucked enough drunks in the tank to know you put a man on his side if you don’t want to be dragging him down to the morgue in the morning. We shouldn’t leave him on his back, but Armstrong reaches him before I do, and Armstrong doesn’t bother flipping him over, we’re too late for all that.

 

It seems wrong I should be upset over it when I’d thought such a thing only half a moment ago. Marston’s no great loss to the world, but to have a man drop dead in front of you is still a chilling thing. With all I’ve done, I’m not so hard as to see a man drop dead and feel nothing at all. I shift towards Armstrong as he stands back from the body, just barely. He’s not Reg, and he’s not here to protect me or to make me feel any better about myself. Not here to make me feel anything at all! But he’s built solid and he’s… he’s displayed some competency even if he couldn’t save the man, and there’s a part of me I suppose wants the comfort of a competent man. A professional, I mean, of being around a level-headed professional, a man who can take this sort of thing in stride. We were right next to each other as it happened, there’s something only human, only natural, in turning to someone in a crisis because they were with you when it happened and because they’re keeping their wits.

 

None of us are equipped to wake the boy, though Miss Brent does pray. After seeing him choke on his drink, no one’s much in the mood for more drinking, I’d imagine. None of us know him or know each other, as to have any proper memorializing. What is there to say? ‘Anthony Marston was a bastard and a child-killer and none of us much liked him, but we guess we’re sorry he carked it’? We carry him to his room anyhow. 

 

I meet Armstrong’s eyes over the bed. Over the corpse. Laid him in his bed. Armstrong covered him up, all proper. I still feel out of my depth. I ought to be doing something. A man in the prime of his life doesn’t drop dead beyond all saving like that just from taking his cocktail down the wrong pipe. We both know it, but what’s there to do about it? This is hardly my beat and whatever I was brought here for, it seems less and less likely each moment it’s what I signed on for. 

 

The others all drift to their own rooms and Armstrong drifts to the door, until Lombard calls him back. Lombard, poking about, which I don’t much like and don’t much trust-- Lombard calling Armstrong over… I come as well to see what, maybe he has a perfectly good reason. I still don’t like it. Armstrong may well be a decent man in bad circumstances, but Lombard’s a bloody monster, and if he’s up to something, well. My beat or not, it’s still my duty to put a stop to anything nefarious.

 

Under the circumstances… it’s not Lombard I’d have to call up to something. Cocaine. Everything about Marston screams ‘I’ve never had a serious consequence in my life’. Screamed, rather. So did he live his life fast and reckless because of the marching powder, or did he pick up the habit when the fast life wasn’t fast enough for his tastes?

 

Armstrong is ready to cover it up, and maybe that’s the one thing should remind me of Reg, considering, but I’m disappointed just the same.

 

“It’s a police matter now, Doctor.” I look him over coolly. He’s red in the face, there’s a shine to him, he’s on edge, but all that’s to be expected, hauling a body about and with all the shocks in one night. Still. Another disappointment, to have the strain show. To be reminded he’s not a man of unflappable cool just because he can control himself to some degree. To think he’s ready to cover a thing like this up, and to wonder what else he might have hidden. To find I don’t want to learn he’s as bad as me… “Same set of rules if you’re posh or not.”

 

And he is posh. No point rubbing elbows and getting friendly-like now, ‘cause he knows I’m not. No point wishing I could believe he were a good man in bad circumstances, nothing changes the kind of man I am, and keeping good company wouldn’t help. 

 

“Very well.” He nods, stiff, turns to go. And I want to keep an eye on him but at least I still trust him further than I trust Lombard, who might go pocketing the goods. 

 

I keep half an eye on Lombard, but I follow Armstrong just the same, and I keep half an eye to the set of his shoulders. The cracks are showing, but they haven’t overtaken him yet, nor me. All we need is to get off this island, it’s just as Wargrave said. Whether or not our hosts arrive, we walk out. We take the boat and we go, and we forget that this all happened. 

 

Well, expect Armstrong and I will both be called upon to give our own professional testimonies as to the death of Tony Marston, but even so. Once that’s done with, and I imagine we can leave out some details, I imagine we can all agree to that, then we go our separate ways and put it behind us once more.

 

Marston still bothers me, all night. Armstrong as well, though I try not to dwell on that. There’s nothing for it, but with Marston… oh, I believe he took cocaine. But do I believe it killed him? Maybe I can’t get a proper inquest, but I promise myself that first thing in the morning, I’ll see what I can see, and then at least I can sleep, and if I’m troubled by the thoughts of what kind of a man Armstrong is, it’s nothing to ruin at least a few hours for me.

 

It doesn’t hit me until the morning what it is I’m looking for-- and if I’m right, I don’t need an inquest, I don’t need an autopsy, I don’t need a single hair plucked or vial of blood drawn. If I’m right, I’ll smell it on him.

 

Reg had called it a gift, my nose. And I didn’t take it for granted. Learned what might come off fruity, or like mothballs, or garlic, or raw eggs, whole lists of possible poisons… And then there was cyanide…

 

“Bit late for the kiss of life, tubs.” Lombard drawls. Hadn’t heard him come in on the bloody thick carpeting… and I could do without being called ‘tubs’, on top of that.

 

“Bloody smart-arse you are.” I roll my eyes. Try not to come up too defensive, despite the wave of repulsion he sets me feeling. 

 

Anyway, let him judge for himself if he likes. Even if he can’t smell it, lips turning that blue overnight, it’s cyanide what done it. Let him get up close and cozy with a dead man’s face, see if he has even a moment of decency over it, with a bloody past like his. At least I can feel something decent, something anyway. Feel a desire to get it right somehow.

 

He don’t know what it is, but he does smell it. So that’s someone can back me up on this being a murder.

 

Breakfast is not a cheery affair. Turns out Mrs. Rogers didn’t last much longer than Marston. Boat’s not here yet and here’s Miss Claythorne having a fit over it. I don’t see any reason she shouldn’t be upset, all considered, except I don’t know that I think she clings to the right things. Think she’s barking up the wrong tree with Armstrong, but it’s not my place to be his defender, is it? Long as no one says a thing they can’t take back, it doesn’t hurt her asking questions and getting answers. 

 

The more it turns into the two of them at each other’s throats, the more tiresome it seems to get. No good focusing all your energy on one person, and when would Armstrong have poisoned Marston? Anyone might have tampered with a drink, I wasn’t watching then, none of us were… but Armstrong… no, his reason for not touching the stuff is real. If he had grabbed for a bottle even to mix a drink for someone else, that would have stood out. That would have been noticed. I’d have noticed it. Blaming him for Mrs. Rogers when he can’t have done Marston, that’s just foolishness, but he’s playing right into it. Them cracks all showing in him, he’s playing right into a petty bloody feud. 

 

Rather listen to them two all day than hear Miss Brent whinge about a four-minute egg to a man what’s just lost his wife, though. One thing finishing school must not have drummed into her. People here lack the common bloody touch, don’t they? 

 

Well. Maybe not all day, the more accusatory Miss Claythorne gets, and Lombard can’t keep his nose out of it, and I don’t know whether I feel for Armstrong, he’s acting just as much a child as anyone, but even so. Law and order, there’s got to be law and order, even here. And I’m not ready to announce about Marston being poisoned, the last thing we need’s a bloody panic, but now it’s come up and the best I can do is minimize the damages while we wait for Narracott.

 

I could take him being angry at me, when I throw my napkin down and say I’ll do the search myself. Hell, he could take a swing at me if he liked and I think we could make up after like gentlemen, a man’s allowed to feel a certain way about having his things pawed through. Wouldn’t do to have a lady do it, even if it weren’t a question of law and order-- wouldn’t do to have a lady going through a man’s… articles. And such. I could take him being angry with me all he liked, only he weren’t. Look on his face when I said I’d do it, he was straight betrayed. 

 

Doing it’s the only way to keep peace, it’s not like I think he done Marston. Maybe Mrs. Rogers was a slip, but he didn’t do Marston. It’s not like it’s personal, there’s nothing personal between us, almost perfect strangers. Why should he feel betrayed? And why should MacArthur make all the difference? Suppose because Armstrong were in the war when he was a young man. Still and all, he could’ve trusted me!

 

He could’ve taken it like a man instead of bringing Wargrave’s medical history into things. That’s not right, that. Not under any duress. A man’s medical history… Wargrave takes it all too much in stride, but I suppose if you’ve had a brush with death and come around, maybe it’s not so strange to be too calm about things. 

 

This isn’t… this shouldn’t be a public thing. If it has to be done, it should be done behind closed doors. Me and Armstrong and MacArthur, up in Armstrong’s room. The accused, the officer of the law, the honorable witness. Not with everyone looking on, not with ladies present. I don’t expect anything outrageous, but I go careful anyway. A man’s got a right to some personal business. A man’s got a right, if there’s a postcard or a magazine he wouldn’t want made public. The sort of thing MacArthur would know to pretend went unseen as much as I would, the sort of thing Miss Brent would faint at for certain, and Miss Claythorne might take even more against him for, maybe. 

 

There’s none of that, but I go careful anyway. Slow as I can be without drawing it all out too unpleasantly. Leastaways it’s only the medical bag, it’s nobody’s business the nature of a man’s personal articles. Once I have all the bottles and such laid out there’s no more need to go digging through all that, anyhow. I go over the labels, not shocked to find about what Armstrong had protested. Mostly just about what he’d protested.

 

Clomethiazole.

 

“Just mild sedatives.” I say, setting it aside along the rest, going through the line-up. 

 

Clomethiazole. Not what done in Marston and not what done in Mrs. Rogers. Whatever did do her in I don’t know, but I know this isn’t for any patient. I know what it is for. Drying out. Recent, then, or a recent relapse. 

 

And maybe then I oughtn’t be surprised when he throws all her things on the floor, but maybe I’d hoped for better. Hoped after the favor I done him, he’d keep civil. For the rest of us if not for her. For a little civility before we put this all behind us. So bloody ready to put this all behind me. 

 

But I feel like Pandora’s Box done opened in my skull and now that I remember Landor I can’t put him back in the dark where he belongs. My eyes close too long and I see him… how like a baby fawn he was before I done him, trembling stick limbs and big doe eyes. 

 

Reg wouldn’t have sold me out to Owen, whoever this Owen even is. Reg wouldn’t have done. No, I know he took my secret to the grave. The man he was, I know. If I could trade his life for mine, I wouldn’t mind his ratting me out, but that’s not a trade any man can make, and I know Reg wouldn’t’ve. Coroner, might be. A doctor who knows how the world works… he’d done it for Reg and not for me. With Reg in the grave, why not talk? He’s got no loyalty to me. It were Reg protecting me, anyone else got involved was only ever protecting Reg. 

 

How he’d folded in on himself, but I see that over and over now. He’d been betrayed, even more than Armstrong when I’d said I’d go through his things, but it hadn’t hurt me then. No, I’d been too… I’d wanted it, wanted his fear, wanted anything to take away that knowing look… I could’ve stopped at any time. He could’ve walked out… I didn’t set out to kill him-- hurt him, scare him, make him pay for thinking he knew something about me, but at any moment I could have stopped, before he were so broken there weren’t hardly nothing left… I could have, and I didn’t. Was a point I knew I had to stop or he’d be too gone… was a point I knew, and I kept going. Was a point I knew it was already too late and he wouldn’t take another breath and I kept going then, too.

 

I can’t be around people… I can’t be around people with this in my head. Whatever the others have done or not done, I can’t be around them. Not a one of them would understand the truth of it, they’d think… 

 

Think I was one of them coppers gets off on the abuse of power, that  I’d done others the same just because I could, that there’s a long list of men who just tripped when I should have been watching.

 

Or think he’d… that he’d tempted me. Tried to bribe me or something, and I’d been tempted. Man doesn’t react the way I did if he wasn’t tempted. I mean not when an offer’s been made .You just say no, you walk out, you don’t… you don’t do what I done.

 

I can’t be around people with all this in my head and no Narracott in evidence… Hide up in my room ‘til the vision fades away, ‘til I’m not assaulted with it at every blink. And the whole time I’m there, I can’t help wondering. Who’s behind Owen, what’s he playing at… who had their hands on Marston’s drink? Anyone could have got down to do Mrs. Rogers and no one the wiser. Anyone could have done Marston, except Armstrong couldn’t have done it directly without me noticing he’d gone for the booze. But Armstrong didn’t touch the stuff and everyone else did, or asked someone to do for them, or had something passed around… And what made me a part of it?

 

It’s because of how I done Landor. But who’d know what I done to him, and who’d want justice for him? His family might want justice, sure, but they don’t know it were me. Don’t know if they ever got my name. Gave strained condolences, sure. Said things sometimes did get out of hand in the drunk tank and sometimes… well, sometimes these things happen. And ain’t it always a tragedy, and won’t we be more careful from now on? So his family can go through life thinking he were picked up after a night of heavy drinking and maybe there were a brawl and ain’t only one man it could be pinned on, and they don’t want to unravel the threads even if they feel it ain’t right… they don’t want to know what he was picked up for. Didn’t want to know any more than they had to.

 

No one who was at the station when it happened would be out for justice for him. Who would they even blab to who’d care? But it could have been the coroner told, or it could have been the desk sergeant knowing I was the only one in the room with him…

 

Can’t hide forever before I’m restless to know if there’s any sign of Narracott yet, and I head down to find Lombard acting suspicious as ever-- suspicious, but when he suggests Owen is hiding on the island… well, maybe it’s so. And if it’s not so, well, maybe I don’t want Lombard skulking around without eyes on him.

 

His idea’s mad-- some potential cave below the cliffs. Well even if there was such a thing, how’s that the best hiding place? How’s someone going to scarper up and down all these here rocks and slippery steep slopes and murder two people just to disappear again? An outbuilding near to the house, sure, or an attic crawlspace, but we’re too far afield, and I stop short of following him further when loose gravel gives way under me and I see myself sailing down the slope, off the cliff, and into the bloody sea.

 

“Ever get the feeling you’re being hunted, tubs?” Lombard asks, coming to a halt a little ways further down.

 

I think of Landor-- no. I think past Landor. I see the sea beyond us here, and I think of Ruby, Gold, and Malachite, the boat and the bathers and the light on the water in strokes of color you’d never think to paint a sea with, only you see some painter’s done it and of course you think yeah, that’s what the sea’s like. I think past Landor back to Ruby, Gold, and Malachite, to the cold sweat and the rising sick feeling. Have I ever in my life felt I wasn’t being hunted? Have I gone a day not tailoring myself to be someone who wouldn’t be?

 

“Stop calling me that, I ain’t even fat.” I crab at him. Man like Lombard, he’d do the hunting, wouldn’t he? They all would. “And no, I don’t.”

 

And if he were decent, he’d leave it at that. But… by now I know he’s not decent. Anyone here’s less decent than I am, it’s Lombard. Him and Marston, two kids and not a drop of remorse. But Lombard’s his own type of indecent. The others may be a grey area, but him and me, we’re the damned ones, ain’t we? But he pushes with a ‘really’ that says he don’t believe me, and even making it about Owen, well… I still don’t like it, or the insinuation anyone I don’t know knows too much about me.

 

“Edward Landor was a degenerate, he was a pansy.” I say, and I don’t know why I should give Lombard even this much, why I should talk to him at all. 

 

Landor, bloodied, confused, hurt… how easily I could wrap my hand around his entire arm like, how there was no fight back in him, I wish he had. If he’d fought back maybe it wouldn’t have gone too far, or maybe I could’ve told myself it was honest self-defense, or maybe anything would have changed and I wouldn’t see those sad doe eyes every time I close mine, and him so strange and delicate and still to the end, the soft sounds he made that were almost crying out, but not… the wind was knocked out of him and he never got it back. He got the wind knocked out of him and he couldn’t even cry out properly, and any moment I could’ve stopped.

 

“He fell down the steps into his cell.” I add, as unimpeachable as I can make it sound, but Lombard, he looks at me. 

 

It’s less dangerous than the look Landor gave. Lombard only takes me for a fellow killer, after all.

 

“You never touched him?”

 

Heat flares up in me, the sick feeling. The colorful sea washing over me making everything rotten, and then I go cold. 

 

“I wouldn’t want to be near one of them dirty bastards.” I protest. Except of course he means did I hit him, of course he means did I push him down so his head hit the bench, did I trip him and he was cuffed and couldn’t catch himself?

 

Of course he only means aren’t we both the same, killers all? But he passes me by while I’m frozen under all the implications, did I touch Landor? And did he offer to touch me? I should never have called him a pansy, only raises the question did he offer… of course he didn’t offer. And of course I wouldn’t have if he did! He only looked at me like he knew me, only looked at me like I were something I’m not, but he never tried to offer me… never put a hand on me and fluttered his eyelashes and invited me to take liberties in exchange for letting him go, and if he had, I’d have… 

 

Well there’s nothing more I could have done. Nothing more I didn’t do to him as it is. Bad enough him looking at me the way he did, without him looking at me-- without him looking at me like he wanted me. He didn’t want me. Whatever he thought he knew about me, whatever he thought he saw in me, he didn’t want me. I mean thank heaven! I mean bad enough everything being like it was.

 

According to Lombard, he’d been warned about the upper levels of the house, and what kind of a bloody idiot goes clambering about the cliffsides over the sea with information like that just sitting in front of him? He could have told me that first, and we could have checked for a madman in the attic, instead of running about risking our necks!

 

Should have insisted on the house first even without knowing, but he was ready to run off, and what was I supposed to do?

 

Lombard heads up, and I’ve half a mind to keep an eye on him still, for how little I trust him, but someone’s got to keep watch, and him running off means that someone has to be me. Armstrong appears at my elbow, and I guess the clomethiazole stopped doing the trick. It shouldn’t hurt me, a perfect stranger taking the edge off, but somehow it does. Somehow after I vouched for him it does.

 

He has the good grace to look ashamed at least, before Lombard reappears and we fall in together on the hunt for Owen.

 

Lombard having a gun surprises me, and if I’m surprised then Armstrong is well beyond mere surprise. And it might only be a false alarm, but for a moment… for a moment I expect a shotgun leveled at us from under the bed, before it’s only a fucking cot.

 

Posh people, no decency whatsoever… no, I reckon the camp bed can’t be a surprise come to think of it. Asking why don’t he leave like Rogers has the options any of us do… Live-in help, where’s he meant to go? Man without options and mourning his dead wife, you think he doesn’t know Owen is completely sodding barmy? Course he knows, but he don’t even have the choice Miss Claythorne does. Hell, losing his wife, maybe he’s just waiting for Owen to kill him next. You see that with loss. Especially a widower-- once a man’s been married, he just don’t know how to be alone with himself.

 

Lombard takes it, at least, for what it is. Whether or not Armstrong accepts what Rogers has said, I know it’s not Rogers he wants to talk to me about when he holds me back. I don’t know why I should find it so hard to be close to him now. Because I’d smelled drink on him, maybe. Or because no one likes to admit he didn’t know something he should have, and I should have known if Lombard had a gun before wandering out to the cliffs alone with him. But I don’t want to be close to Armstrong, and it doesn’t matter the reason.

 

It doesn’t matter. We all wind up in a huddle just the same, and it’s Lombard tells Armstrong about the cyanide. Only fuels the bloody feud, doesn’t it? And that’s why detective work’s best left to detectives, but I haven’t got so much as a sodding uniformed officer, do I? I’ve got a Fenian with a gun and a doctor with a bad case of the shakes, and two dead bodies with not enough clues. 

 

Beginning to wonder if Narracott even is coming. The others might think it foolish to investigate now, when the local police will handle it and they all want to think it’s a pair of coincidences, but someone’s got to have an account of things to give the local boys. And I’ve got to do something with myself to keep old ghosts at bay.

 

I don’t think it’s Miss Claythorne anyway. MacArthur, maybe-- and when Wargrave comes up, well… I’ve heard he was right to hang Seton, but I’ve heard a few other things besides. Is that what this is, a trial?

 

“Tubs. You’ve been looking sideways at Armstrong all morning, and now everyone’s fair game.” Lombard breaks in, as if I hadn’t just been agreeing with his assessment!

 

The betrayal’s back in Armstrong’s eyes and I like it less than ever. I haven’t been looking sideways at him. Hasn’t been just this morning that I’ve looked at him any type of way, we sat next to each other at dinner and at breakfast. I only volunteered to search his things so the lady wouldn’t be doing it, didn’t know if she meant personal belongings or only his doctor’s bag. If I’ve been looking at him any type of way, it’s not for thinking he’s got something to do with this.

 

He looks so honestly hurt that even if I’d wanted to be free of his company a moment ago I can’t leave it like this now. He looks…

 

He looks like he’d hoped for better of me, as I may have hoped for better of him. 

 

“Don’t want to pay attention to what he said.” I say, with a half step towards Armstrong now we’re left alone. With as much earnestness as I could give anyone on this island. Maybe as much as I’d give anyone off it. Haven’t been an earnest man in some time. Haven’t been since Reg died, or maybe since Landor. 

 

It’s all I can give, a fraction of being earnest. And the hope he won’t look so hangdog at me next time I see him, but I need to move. I need to get away from the restless, sick feeling that builds up in me when I stand this close and when I see the look on his face.

 

My list of suspects is down a man before Narracott shows his bleeding face. War may change men for the worse and maybe it did MacArthur, but he didn’t do himself in like that. It ain’t military honors, but he gets me and Armstrong and Rogers and Lombard for pallbearers and that’s the best we can do.

 

Who it is, I don’t know. I don’t even know where to start.

 

Lombard. I don’t trust him and I don’t like him, and I don’t like he’s got a gun, but hell, he’s got a sodding gun, why not shoot people? No. He could be playing me, putting me in his confidence, pretend we’re on the case together and turn me against the others, but something in this doesn’t seem his style. He’s not a good man. And he could have got away and done it while still being with me enough I might think he’d never have the chance. If he knew the island, he could. But I don’t honestly believe it.

 

Miss Brent. He’d even named her, when he was ‘taking the piss’, but could she? Poisoning Marston, yes. Mrs. Rogers, certainly. But even if she’d pretended she’d only found the General’s body, could a woman her age and build take out a military man of his?

 

Wargrave. I don’t know, maybe. He might be a sadistic old goat, and the record did have a certain courtroom flair, but the man couldn’t even carry his own suitcase, so I don’t know how he could’ve taken out MacArthur, ‘cause that one certainly wasn’t a poisoning.

 

Miss Claythorne. Seems a bit ridiculous to me at this point. Can’t just discount her without thinking about it, but I can’t take her serious as the culprit, either.

 

Armstrong. No. No, he’s not holding himself together well enough for that. He’d have to be faking the DTs and falling off the wagon, and I don’t think he’s capable. He still comes off as about as close to blameless as anyone here, maybe Miss Clayton excepted. 

 

Rogers. I hadn’t thought it before, but buggered if I’m not thinking it now. Rogers has been on the island long enough. He’d know how to get around. Killing his own wife’s not on, is it? But she had the kindest death of the lot, after all. Not to mention it buys him sympathy, soldiering on through that. And he’s shifty, and anyways none of these posh folks is gonna finger him for a crime when they see him as more a walking tea service than a human man. Dunno his motive for picking out people with skeletons in their closets, but if I were in his shoes I’d snap and kill a hundred Marstons.

 

The storm rolls in before Narracott does. _ If  _ he was ever going to. Judge Wargrave and Miss Claythorne roll in with it, wet, and Miss Brent’s the only one can decently see to helping Miss Claythorne at that point, but then Miss Claythorne’s perfectly capable of changing without a ladies’ maid to help her, and in the end she don’t bother with changing. I take the opportunity to escort the judge up to his room so as he can change into something dry-- and I take the opportunity to tell him about the gun. Wouldn’t be right his not knowing when Armstrong and Rogers know as well as I do. Miss Claythorne might not have to think about catching cold, either, but I imagine in Wargrave’s age and condition, it’s more of a consideration.

 

Tensions are high and nobody’s much being reasonable. If people were being reasonable, we might get to the bottom of this. 

 

There’s a good stab at it. A very brief good stab. Miss Brent holds the opinion I’d expect her to of Soho. Den of bloody vice, not that it’s pertinent to our inquiries. This Owen or Owens, whoever they are, might have gone through an agency in Soho to send their letters and arrange their interviews, but if they had the dosh to set all this up, they’d hardly bum around a place like that, would they? He, at any rate. There’s at least one Owen who’s at least fit enough to bash MacArthur’s brains in. 

 

Seen worse, but then… 

 

I imagine I could’ve done it, and I’m just as suspect to the others as anyone else, coming in with a false name. But they don’t know I did empty handed worse than what Owen did to MacArthur, and they don’t need to know. 

 

I’d expect one person at least to be on my side in demanding Lombard relinquish his weapon. I’d expect at least one person, and I’d like to think if I was among reasonable people at all, we’d band together and he’d have to do it or shoot us all. Hell, he’d probably take the latter option, the nasty piece of work. I’m clearly not among reasonable people, if they all think him having a gun is just fine and dandy. 

 

Armstrong, say. Maybe he wouldn’t have for a frail old man or a lady, but me and Armstrong together might have got it off him without a real fight and without someone getting shot. But then, decent people don’t carry guns on holiday, do they? Not that this is anyone’s idea of a holiday even for those weren’t hired on.

 

The problem with the idea of Morris being Owen is, before he contacted us all, he didn’t know… well, he wouldn’t know Miss Brent and not only on account of she’d find it distasteful, I think he’d have as much reason or more not to like her company. He’d not have known MacArthur. Maybe he’d have handled employment-finding for Miss Claythorne or the Rogerses before, but I can’t imagine him running in Marston’s circles. If he’s ever had legal trouble, he hasn’t run across me and his name didn’t ring a bell for Wargrave. Didn’t ring a bell for Armstrong, sounds like, so I don’t expect he’s been in and out of his surgery. And it sounds like it’s the first Lombard had known of him.

 

That’s the thing, I could tie some of us together, but not all of us. I can tie Armstrong to Wargrave and Wargrave to me, through other people we’d interact with professionally. I could put Miss Brent in the social circles of Wargrave and MacArthur and Armstrong, maybe, but not so much Marston, and she don’t know any of them directly, or she didn’t before this. None of us did. But who would know everyone from Wargrave to Rogers? And if we’re not all connected, why would anyone care to collect us for this?

 

Judge Wargrave may have a piece of the puzzle but it’s not exactly helpful. Was always a chance-- once we knew it weren’t straightforward for any of us and once we heard the bloody record-- was always a chance ‘Owen’ was a false name, but this… I don’t think it’s clever. It’s not a proper anagram anyway. Imagine someone chortling to himself thinking he’d made such a clever little joke and it’s just… a name that sounds a bit like a word. Might as well have gotten a letter from Ima Keller, har har. Stupid. But then, killers, they always think they’re cleverer than they are. They always slip up eventually, ‘cause they always think they’re so bloody clever.

 

Lombard is still looking for someone hiding in the crawlspace, but Wargrave’s on the money. It’s got to be one of us. All the ratting around after any sign of another person only led Lombard right back to Rogers anyway, and he still don’t want to hear it.

 

I’m at my very last nerve with Lombard, like to step on his neck, but he’s got a gun and I don’t. And I think of it and I see Landor. See his doe eyes and the way his mouth fell open like he wanted to know why and couldn’t make the words come out, and even if there weren’t a gun to think of, it’s enough to stop me crossing the room.

 

Least I’m not the only one finds him a disgusting brute, and a potential menace. He don’t have to be Owen to be dangerous. More than one killer on this island.

 

We all lug our things back up in the end, where we can all pretend it’s the worsening storm that’s keeping Narracott away, and not word from Owen not to come too soon. ‘Cause that’s what it is. I know that’s what it is… and it’s not some stupid bloody instinct, it’s logic, it’s experience. That’s what a policeman’s gut feelings are built on, it’s just the name you give when your experiences pile up enough you don’t need to think ‘em through before you know what to do. But it’s built on logic, logic and experience. Not just some whimsy.

 

It’s Miss Brent suggests locking our doors, as if I haven’t done so since we come here. Any time I’m alone in my room, it’s locked. Imagine Miss Claythorne’s thought of locking her door before now, and I imagine it’s habit to Lombard.

 

Sleep’s fitful. I dream about Landor. Landor on the floor, balled up to protect himself and not doing any kind of a job of it, and Armstrong looking at me like I’ve betrayed him, and Reg with his arms folded, standing in the corner disappointed in me. The room spins, and Reg puts his hands on my shoulders, I can feel him behind me, can feel him being disappointed, and the weight of his hands has never been so heavy in the real waking world as it is in my dream. He holds me still, as if I could carry on with him and with Armstrong in the room. Armstrong, baleful gaze, and he collects Landor off the floor, carries him like a bloody bride, a  _ bloody _ bride, those eyes fixed on me. And it’s Rogers comes to clean the whole thing, except he only spreads the blood around, and tells me that’s just the way it is sometimes. Sometimes the stain don’t wash out. Sometimes it just gets bigger.

 

Armstrong hollering to wake the dead is a bloody relief compared to my dreams, though it’s ingrained habit keeps me from thundering downstairs without step one of the usual morning routine. Not so routine as most mornings. By the time I get down, the crowd’s dispersed, and there’s my number one bloody suspect with his guts strewn across the floor. Barely any time to take Armstrong looking tousled and hysterical before the corpse jumps out at me. 

 

And Armstrong is hysterical, or nearly so. Red in the face, his hair in need of smoothing out… man’s a doctor and here he is gone to pieces at the sight of-- well, no, I can’t blame him for not being prepared for the mess Rogers is. A little blood would be one thing, a corpse like the others had been, that I’d expect him to bear, but I’ve never seen anything as grisly as Rogers in all my time on the force and the thing comes closest is still Landor, always Landor. Remembered him so clear now I might never lose him again.

 

Still not pleased at how useless Armstrong is, it’s up to me and Lombard to handle everything, and I don’t fancy spending the time with Lombard. Not that I’d fancy spending it with Armstrong. Posh, weak-stomached, booze-soaked tosser, no. No, it’s not as if I fancy spending time with him any more, only he’d be preferable to Lombard. 

 

Maybe it is Lombard. Maybe he has been playing me. It don’t seem his style but he seems the likeliest left, and if so, I ought to stick with him, keep an eye on him. 

 

No matter how we wrap Rogers, he’s a bloody mess. No matter how careful we try to be carrying him, I wind up soaked through to the skin with blood. He’s heavier than he looks, dead weight, and it’s a struggle moving him, no good way to go about it. No good way to go about it… sums up everything about this sodding island. 

 

By the time we’ve got him tucked away, my arms are aching and so’s my back, sore all across the lower part and stiff all the way up my spine, and I think I deserve a shower, even if it can’t be a hot one, but there’s Lombard giving orders. If anyone ought to be giving orders between us, I’d think it’d be me-- furthermore, we hauled up the damn corpse, someone else could do the cleaning. Armstrong could make himself useful at that. But… the stairs, we dripped a fair amount on our way up, sure… still it’s better than the spot we found him in. 

 

I may not be happy to take orders from the likes of Lombard, and I may not be happy to have more to do, out of breath as I am… but he ain’t going to see me quit, either. If he can keep working, I can keep working. Just need my breath back and I can keep working, just fine. Not going to look like an old man with an aching back in front of Lombard. If he is Owen, I don’t want to look so weak-- let him second-guess himself about coming after me. Whatever plan he’s got for me, let him think twice. And if he’s not, well… my pride still don’t need to take his calling me a tired old man on top of it all, ‘tubs’ is bad enough.

 

My heart clenches at the sound of the gong again. After this morning, my heart fairly beats out my chest at it. Don’t know why it should-- everyone here a stranger, and I’m still alive, and it narrows down the suspects by one if someone else’s been done in. 

 

I’m still soaked through with blood, every inch of me sore and tired, and now this… Owen’s stepping up his game, seems like, party’s already half dead… and we may all be strangers, but something like relief hits me when I see Armstrong. He looks haunted and ready to jump out of his skin, but he’s alive. Miss Claythorne rung the bell, and Lombard comes up behind me, and Wargrave’s beat me to the group, and that leaves Miss Brent. 

 

Who somehow Armstrong’s not fit to haul out of the way. What with him wearing a nice shirt, only stained with coffee and not with half a man’s supply of blood spilled out all over his front. So that job’s down to me and Lombard again, and there’s a resentment in me at it, sure. A natural resentment, with how hard I’ve worked today already. But I do it, and I don’t make a fuss over it. Not the type to make a fuss. Been as bloody before, anyhow, and she ain’t so bad. Ain’t so much a mess, though she’s just as much dead weight on my dead arms.

 

Armstrong don’t even bother coming up with us. Wouldn’t ask it of the judge, he’s in no state to carry a body and I wouldn’t even ask him to go up a flight of stairs if he didn’t have to, but Armstrong could’ve… something. Kept me being alone with Lombard. 

 

Well, Miss Claythorne does that. For what it’s worth, anyway, but given her gall I’d rather Lombard, even if he decided to leave my corpse up with Miss Brent’s. Taken my chances grappling with a killer over being called one, over the suggestion I’m heartless just because I’m hungry. As if I haven’t worked myself to exhaustion all day, and as if I’m not accustomed to cleaning up other people’s messes-- as if I haven’t seen enough in all my time on the force as would give me an iron clad stomach. Near enough to one. But the way she looks at me…

 

I can’t let it stand. I can’t bear the weight of that look, that judgment. Suppose I’d made her clean the stairs, then? She’d be famished if she spent her morning like I spent mine. Suppose she spent hers seeing the toffs got their morning cuppa, Rogers or no Rogers. Suppose she had breakfast if she wanted it, and maybe she didn’t, but she could have, she wasn’t hauling a corpse. 

 

If Lombard is Owen, I won’t be at all sorry if he snaps her little neck once I’m out of the room. I could eat a bloody horse, and I need a bloody shower. And I deserve that shower and I deserve to eat if I’m hungry, she don’t have to go to any trouble she don’t want to. Perfectly capable of making sandwiches, but I don’t deserve to be looked at like I’m the monster when I’m the only bloody officer of the law here, and a killer on the loose!

 

I get as much blood scrubbed out of my dressing gown as I can manage before hanging it up to dry, and the din down the hall is enough to let me know I won’t be getting the chance to try the shower, but I have just enough time to pull on a clean shirt, leastaways, before storming back down to see Miss Claythorn on the stairs, with her head in her hands-- and whatever she’s upset for now, it serves her right-- and Armstrong and Wargrave both standing about, and Lombard running around kicking up a fuss.

 

His gun’s missing. Or he says it is, except I think it’s a ruse so when one of us is shot, the others won’t pin it on him. 

 

Armstrong looks stricken, at the suggestion he might have killed Rogers, and I remind myself I’m too pissed at him for not doing any of the work to feel sorry for him.

 

“You shrieking like a woman, was that a bit of amateur dramatics, was it?” Lombard asks, advancing on him, and I shift forward, ready to get between them if need be.

 

Man finds someone in the state Armstrong found Rogers, he’s got every right to shout the house down about it, nothing… nothing womanly in that. Was he supposed to keep quiet until we came down for breakfast, say ‘oh, by the way, someone must figure out how to poach an egg, because Rogers has parted ways with the lower half of his body’? That would have been a good sight more suspicious than his shouting for us all. Nothing womanly in that. Resent Lombard even suggesting such a thing about the man. He may be a bit of a good-for-nothing toff, but he’s not… 

 

I mean, if he was, he’s… 

 

Well.

 

I don’t jump between them-- Armstrong’s recovered enough of himself he don’t need me to. If Lombard’s not armed, Armstrong’s fine to take care of himself. Not a damsel in distress, to need me jumping in. 

 

He may have been good for nothing all morning, but it does please me a bit he’s suspicious as I am of whether Lombard’s gun’s even stolen, and I don’t say as much-- he don’t need my approval, anyway. But he could use a bit of backing up. He hasn’t got the words for it, that’s all-- he’s got the idea, but he’s too flustered to get the words out right.

 

The look in his eyes when they meet mine is wary, but grateful. It catches in my chest. After how unexpectedly hard I took him looking so betrayed, this is… well, it’s us on the same page, at least, and we’ve all gone wrong with each other over the course of this mess. But if we stay on the same page… it could be all right. 

 

Wouldn’t be a bad team, him and me. If he could keep off the sauce and keep his cool. Maybe that’s a big bloody ‘if’, but… he’s got medical expertise. If we could just… if we could work together, investigate this properly. If he could get a look at MacArthur or Miss Brent-- won’t have him look at Rogers again, but either of the others… with Miss Brent sitting, maybe it’s a lost cause, only maybe he could tell me something. Was the attacker right or left handed, how tall… could it possibly have been a woman or can we rule Miss Claythorne out? Can we say it’s Lombard for certain, with enough proof to bring before-- well, before a judge. We’ve got one of those. 

 

“You were the last one down.” Lombard turns on me. Which, of course he does. I put into words what Armstrong could only drive at-- I’ve let the others know he’s not off the hook yet. “The last one.”

 

Miss Claythorne looks at me, not like she hasn’t already, for the grand crime of being hungry after hard, thankless work, and even Wargrave… Wargrave, who could trust me as a fellow part of the system, after all! And worst, Armstrong, that gratitude crumbling into betrayal and doubt, all over again.

 

“Ages behind everyone else, what, what took you so long?” Lombard continues, advancing. 

 

I draw myself up best I can under all the scrutiny. My dignity’s already in tatters. Blood soaked into my sodding pyjamas, and not even the robe to cover up with, shirt not even tucked in, collar not fixed, in desperate need of a shower, but there’s a limit to what one man’s dignity can take, after all. I don’t owe anyone an answer, even as Lombard’s advancing on me now. At least watching him, I don’t have to see what Armstrong thinks of me, or think on why it should be so important.

 

“You have my gun, you little prick!” He finishes his tirade, and I think I might just deck him for that one, but I don’t-- Wargrave interrupts, before I can, but the insult still burns. 

 

“I never killed Rogers, and I ain’t got your key, or your sodding gun.” I sneer, and his face is so… so fucking close to mine. I could smash his nose with my forehead, teach him right trying to corner me. And-- and talk about dignity, well at least I’ve got a shirt on. He’s just going to wander around like this, and with a lady present? Some sort of pervert, wandering around half dressed in front of a lady, got no room to judge me for anything.

 

So close and turned just so, hell, I could lean forward and bite him. Not that I would. Be enough to make you sick. But if he comes at me, if he means to make this a fight, I’ll break his nose and I’ll do whatever else I need to. He’s shaking with rage and he’s too much in my personal space to take anything off the table if it comes down to defending myself. It might even be a pleasure. At least Lombard would deserve it.

 

“And what took you so long if you weren’t in my room stealing my gun, and why were you the last down?”

 

And by the time he’s done speaking he’s closer still, how could any human being be so close to a body? I can’t breathe having him so near to me, on top of me, I can’t  _ think _ , dignity be buggered, I can’t spend another moment with his face up in mine.

 

“I was in the bloody lavvy, if you must know!” I go ahead and all but shout it in his face. Would have liked to be spared talking about my personal habits in front of a lady, would have liked to be spared making my morning routine a public matter. But I can’t breathe if he don’t take a step back, I feel faint and sick to my stomach and I just need some space. “Constipated!”

 

Armstrong laughs. A little surprised peep of a laugh. I can see the urge to on Lombard’s face, but it’s Armstrong I hear, and it cuts through me. Might have… might have laughed along if it was at anything else. It’s the sort of laugh trying so hard not to even exist that you wind up laughing harder for it, but I’m certainly not laughing now.

 

And Miss Claythorne, so much for the genteel nature of the fairer sex. Well, to hell with the lot of them!

 

And then Armstrong’s got himself started and… well, if he ever has cause to look at me all betrayed again, I won’t go feeling bad over his puppy-dog eyes!

 

“Oh, yes, laugh it up.” I glare at him, at all of them. At least Lombard gives me some room to breathe without laughing in my face outright, least he steps back, takes his macho posturing elsewhere. But it’s pretty cold comfort with Armstrong and Miss Claythorne tittering at my sodding misfortune. “It’s not funny!”

 

Nothing I can say cuts through him giggling-- if anything he just goes harder! Until I say it could have been anyone, and that does shut him up.

 

We search Armstrong first. He strips down and stands by in a towel while we all get to work… 

 

I look. I mean who could help looking, under the circumstances-- under any circumstance, when you don’t plan on seeing a man in a towel through the course of your day, and here one is. 

 

He’s not happy about it. After how upset he’d been having his bag searched, now this. Miss Claythorne goes for the chest of drawers right away, before I can take it, and if he feels betrayed over that, I don’t blame him. Man should be allowed some… some dignity, I mean. Should be allowed to have his private articles kept private. Not have some girl pawing through his unmentionables! 

 

I won’t be happy about it when it’s my turn, but I do hope I’m spared the indignity of having a lady go through my undergarments! I would let Armstrong do it, and no hard feelings. 

 

I’m not standing about in front of a lady with a towel on and naught else, if I can help it. If they want to send Armstrong in to watch me undress, as long as I can keep something else on in front of the lady. Or a pat-down. I didn’t offer, but maybe I should have. Preserves the dignity a little, you don’t have to be strip-searched, not like…  I mean I’ve done it before, making arrests, very routine. But it’s too late to offer now, and anyway I wouldn’t feel right patting down a lady. Wouldn’t feel right patting down a judge, either, but we’ve all got to be searched.

 

I don’t know what I expected. Armstrong’s not it, exactly. Oh, I knew what his build would be, sure. No disappointment there, solid. Soft, but not fat. Might have been an athlete in his youth, and been sedentary some few years, but there’s muscle under, too. 

 

Body hair’s ginger. Somehow I expected he’d be smooth, and I don’t know why I should have thought so. Not like he’s walking about with a carpet on his chest, but he’s hairy enough, properly manly. It trails up thick from where the towel’s wrapped tight around his waist, and I turn away, face heating, and dig through his closet. 

 

When I close my eyes, I see Landor, but not as I left him. See him trailing a delicate hand over Armstrong’s bare chest, see a come-on in his doe eyes. But a man like Armstrong, he wouldn’t go for that. I don’t know why I should even imagine it, even not trying to imagine it. Why I should think he’d let another man touch him like that. He wouldn’t. Wouldn’t want some skinny little pansy pinching at them pale pink nipples and mewling like a cat in heat over him. Kneeling to get past that towel. He’d be disgusted at the thought, rightly so, he’d be… 

 

And of course I am. Sick to my stomach picturing it. What a thing to come into a decent man’s head… dizzy just to think on it.

 

“Not like you’re being singled out. We’re all getting the same.” I turn back to him, not sure if I mean to reassure or not, or just to make conversation enough to get Landor out of my head. Bad enough to see him bloodied and dying, but to see him in my mind’s eye like this… and Armstrong dragged into it.

 

Freckles all over. I hadn’t expected him to be freckled all over. I mean I hadn’t pictured him at all. I never spared a moment’s thought to what was under Armstrong’s clothes before now, but he’s got freckles, down his arms. On his chest a bit. His shoulders and his collarbone. Thick with them. Pale towards the center of him. 

 

Swimming, maybe. For his shoulders and arms to get most of it, and maybe his back, but it’s not like I have to see his back.

 

Wargrave changes into his dressing gown, though Lombard looks him over to make sure he hasn’t pulled anything, but we all afford an old man a bit more dignity. I can only assume we’ll afford the lady the same. I should think so. Should think any decent man would, but then Lombard never did strike me as the decent type.

 

I’m up next, and relieved I hadn’t gotten my own dressing gown too wet trying to scrub blood spots out, but I’m not afforded the same courtesy-- Lombard’s doing, but Armstrong agrees with him right quick. 

 

“We’re all getting the same.” He says, though he shrugs apologetic-like about it.

 

He looks me over, as I’m standing there in a towel. Brief, but it sets my nerves racing. Sizing me up to know if he could take me? Or… 

 

His eyes meet mine a moment, and then he makes sure he takes the job of rooting through my drawers while Miss Claythorne goes through the closet. And I do owe him some kind of thanks for that. My skin crawls enough just being on display like this, couldn’t bear having her going through my underthings. 

 

My gaze darts around between all of them, but I watch him the most. Slow and methodical about the whole thing, surgeon’s hands precise about their business. Their business being my private things and the going through thereof, but anyhow. 

 

“Nothing here.” He says. 

 

Lombard’s made a sodding mess of my bedding, and no surprise he don’t fix a damn thing after, smashing through the place. I pick it all up and do my best to fix it. Ain’t no domestic help around anymore, he should think of that before leaving everyone’s beds a mess, we’ve all got to fix it ourselves, and no one’s going to be any easier on him than he is on us.

 

“Look, it could be worse.” Armstrong says, sidling over to help. 

 

“How?” I don’t meet his eyes long. I didn’t expect his helping with this, didn’t expect his hand to nearly brush mine smoothing out the covers, didn’t expect him to stick so close to me while the others finish up going through all my belongings. 

 

“I don’t know. Could have found an issue of Physical Culture stuffed under your mattress.” He shrugs. 

 

The implication might have me sick, if there was anything on my stomach to toss up. As it is there’s not. And anyway, there’s women on the cover of Physical Culture as often as men, he wasn’t implying… he wasn’t implying I’d be the sort… Only implying that if a magazine is tucked under a man’s mattress, he ain’t reading it for the articles, and it’s as well we’ve both been spared that humiliation.

 

Never picked up a copy but I imagine the insides are as balanced as the outsides. Suppose it’s one of the more wholesome of the fitness mags, in that way. Still never interested me. I’m perfectly content without resorting to fitness magazines to get my jollies.

 

Armstrong hands me my dressing gown when they finish turning my room over, looks at me like he’d like to say something, but his eyes don’t quite meet mine, and I’m afraid to ask. We’re not done, anyhow, two more rooms to see to.

 

Lombard is utterly shameless. The display he makes of himself… perverse. Can’t hike his towel up to a decent level, and looking around at us all like he’s daring us to ogle him.

 

Looking at Miss Claythorne, that is. Not at the rest of us, certainly. Undoubtedly the man’s a pervert, but he’s not-- that is, he’s certainly not looking to attract admiring glances from Judge Wargrave! Nor from Armstrong and me, I mean it goes without saying, none of us… none of us are ogling him. Miss Claythorne’s proper enough not to rise to the bait, and I’m no friend to her but I follow her out sharp when she goes-- don’t need any more of a view of Lombard in his towel, and someone’s got to… well, someone’s got to stand by at the door and make sure he don’t barge in on her changing. It don’t seem right, four men standing about a poor girl in a towel, but the thought of patting her down don’t sit well with me, either. She could do worse than me for it, at least I wouldn’t be… I wouldn’t get anything dirty out of it. But I still don’t want to if it can be helped.

 

Her having a bathing suit’s a lucky thing. Strikes me as odd she would, but I’m glad for it. Nothing indecent about a bathing suit. We’d all see she didn’t have a gun on her, and no patting down necessary. And Lombard may ogle, but at least it’s more protection than a towel offers. 

 

Have to be some kind of a pervert, ogling someone in a towel under circumstances like these. 

 

I stand at the door a while longer, even as she says she’s ready and Wargrave and Armstrong come in, suggest to Lombard he wait outside. The look on his face asking me what I’m afraid of, I don’t like, too much like a leer, and I push in to do my part. 

 

I hate the figural clock on her dresser, dunno how she can stand being in the room with it. Hideous thing. Everything about the room has me on edge, though. Moreso than the others, I just don’t like being in there. Well, suppose it’s only right not to want to feel one’s intruding on a lady, not proper, that is. 

 

By the time we’ve finished, Lombard still hasn’t taken the suggestion to dress, hasn’t even put on a robe and underthings like the rest of us, walking about in his towel still and I wish he’d left a bit more room at the doorway, having to push past him so close and him all but naked. But if he doesn’t have the gun in his room, then it’s somewhere else, and if I’m the one to find it, I’m taking the bullets out and chucking them off the cliff into the sea. Shouldn’t none of us have a loaded gun to fight over.

 

Every bloody room and we don’t find it, and Lombard more and more unhinged the longer we search. At least he puts a robe on at last, but it’s not much consolation when he’s slowly going mad.

 

Don’t get to eat a thing before dinner-- and I do notice I’m not the only one with an appetite by then. A little hard work and there’s no being dainty about it, is there? Except tearing through a house this size is more than a little work. It’s a bloody great deal of work.

 

Too exhausted and too starving to do more than eat cold beans out of the tin. We all wind up with whatever’s closest to hand, don’t think half of us look at the labels. Don’t much matter at this point. 

 

Even for a bachelor, this is a low point. I mean I’d normally heat the damn beans up. Make some sodding toast. I do know how to put together three square meals a day, been a bachelor long enough and I ain’t got staff to take care of me. But what’s even the point of it now? 

 

Been a long time since I felt so sore, or so tired, or so hungry. I wish I’d never come… chucked the letter in the bin. Lombard got an advance at least, or he said as much telling us how he were hired on, but all I got was a letter and some vague promises. If I get out of this, all I’ve done is wasted my holiday. Given myself a lot of grief for nothing. No tidy retirement, no cottage in a quiet village with a big garden. Just working as long as I can, taking my pension… being happy with what I got.

 

Why wasn’t I happy enough with what I got? Why couldn’t I have been happy not dragging up the past? But now I think of Landor, and now I look at Armstrong, him watching Lombard, and I see what he looks like in a towel, picture a pale hand on a skinny wrist touching at him, but a man’s hand. Why? He didn’t ask for a starring role in these thoughts, and I didn’t ask to have him. Nothing about Armstrong says he’d be the type to let himself be touched… even to accept a favor and not give one in return, and some men are that type if it’s all they can get, and it don’t mean they fancy a boy like that. You close your eyes and a mouth is a mouth, is all. Some men get weak when they haven’t been touched in too long, but it’s not as if Armstrong struck me as that type, either. 

 

Having these sick thoughts about him… it’s not right. 

 

He meets my eyes, and I can’t read much in the look that passes between us. I wish I knew what he saw in me. 

 

We all move to more comfortable chairs, but none of us feel much more comfortable. Armstrong’s off the wagon, but at this point I haven’t even got it in me to be disappointed. How do you begrudge a man a drink at a time like this?

 

Well, sure, we should all be sharp, keep our wits about us, but he wouldn’t do that any better without a drink in his hand, to be honest. That’s fine, though… enough to calm his nerves, not enough to make him stupid, and he’ll be fine. 

 

Not that I can be sure it isn’t him, and yet for all that my opinion on the man has bounced around, no matter what Lombard took me to mean, I never seriously believed Armstrong could be Owen. Even now, I take him for the man least likely, the man most wronged in all this. 

 

Well… Wargrave was only doing his duty with what he knew, that’s as may be. And it’s hard to imagine him taking MacArthur. Miss Claythorne might could’ve, if he hadn’t seen the weapon, if he’d been inattentive and she’d come up behind, if she got his trust. She could be playacting at being upset. Playacting at thinking me ghoulish, for cleaning up messes she made. Miss Claythorne… could she have done Rogers, though?

 

No. Lombard had to have done Rogers. Lombard has to be our man. 

 

Armstrong rises, agitated. Suppose another half a glass of something wouldn’t hurt him, it’s not good having him like this. It’s not good having anyone panic right now, and even if it means dulling his senses, if we can all stay calm… there’s no gun-- good show if someone threw it in the sea, anyway-- and as long as we stay calm, think rationally, there’s a way through this.

 

“We can’t just sit here doing nothing!” He says. Not at all calm, no. Not the sort of thing gives a man confidence, but I’ve given up on looking for that from him. Maybe it’s high time I was on the supply side of that sort of calm, anyway. Let Reg be my rock ‘til the day he died and since then I been floating, looking for someone I could attach myself to. Someone who’d give the feeling it was safe and things were going to go right. A man with authority, nevermind by then I had authority of my own, but I was always looking higher up the chain for something. Now it’s time to be that man.

 

“What are we supposed to do?” I sigh. If he does get hysterical, what do we do then? What do I do, to keep everyone safe, if people start losing their heads now? But I’ve got to. I might not owe it to Armstrong, but I owe it… I owe it to the world in some sort of a way. Owe it to us all here, anyway, to keep things calm best I can. Calm never was my strong suit, but it’s about bloody time I did my best.

 

“Light a fire on the headlands? Signal for help?” He gesticulates, looks around. I wouldn’t have thought, first meeting him, that he’d become such a lost lamb… but then none of us saw this coming. 

 

I wish I could comfort him. Not just calm him, not just stem the rising tide of hysteria, I want to make him… less upset. Truly less upset. There’s a difference between wanting someone calm for your sake and for theirs… it hits me that I want him calm for his. 

 

We’re not friends, why I should want anything for his sake… I can’t look at him, or at anyone. I can’t answer him-- and I don’t have to, Lombard’s quick enough to put any hopes to rest. I don’t picture Landor’s hands on Armstrong now, though… I picture mine. 

 

This… this is what I killed a man for. For wanting something as small as what I want? For wanting a moment of happiness with somebody? 

 

No. No. I will not be putting my hands on Doctor Armstrong, nor anything else on him, neither. I will not… I will not  _ want _ him like this. It’s the stress making me this way, that’s all, just stress. It’s the mixed up memories of Landor with his skinny fawn limbs and big doe eyes and all his blood, and all the blood of today, and a moment of seeing eye to eye with a man I wouldn’t even like if we met on the street. We wouldn’t even talk to each other, on the street. Wouldn’t even notice me. 

 

I can’t think about this now. Already I’ve missed something. I lift my head from my hands to Miss Claythorne in the doorway and Armstrong’s paranoia. 

 

She does a fine job defending herself, anyway, and I half entertain the notion of a friendly word when she goes. Something. Keep him from spiraling further, not-- not to… to try and make him like me, or anything foolish like that. He’s not wrong to be paranoid, only wrong in how he goes about it, after all. But I don’t need to speak up, and anyway, I wouldn’t want anyone else hearing. Thinking… thinking we had any kind of a special alliance. Thinking…

 

Thinking anything like the truth of it.

 

When Lombard offers to go with her, I do speak up, sharpish-- that’s something needs a stop put to it right off, before she’s dead and stuffed somewhere and he’s lurking who-knows-where waiting to pick off the rest of us.

 

“No, we go singly or in a group.” I nod, once I have the room’s attention. It’s the only way. Splitting off three and two in any combination is asking for trouble. There’s no real telling… I can suspect as much as I like but there’s no being sure, and so there can’t be any pairs.

 

I don’t get any arguments on the logic of it. Can’t argue the logic of it, not without looking like a killer, and so we all head back to the kitchen in a group, where we’d had our sad little supper-- a not-very-satisfying one, but I think even with the day I’ve had I’d be sick if I tried to eat more… it’d only be another cold tin of something. Don’t sit right on the stomach to eat like that.

 

Somehow Armstrong and I wind up side by side. Every meal we’ve been side by side-- even when I were at the end of the table, he were directly to one side of me. But that’s not something worth thinking on, not now. 

 

Lombard brings up Wargrave’s reputation-- makes me sound like a gossiping old biddy while he’s at it, and the bloody nickname… whatever part of me’s been wanting to leave him a bloody mess, though, it’s gone into hiding now. I’ve had enough blood for one day-- I’ve had enough for one lifetime. Dangerous thoughts get stirred up when I try and chase the reasons why down. 

 

Can’t think of smashing Lombard’s face through the back of his head without thinking of Landor. Can’t think of Landor now without thinking of Armstrong. And then I think… too many things I can’t be thinking. 

 

I can’t be having a breakdown now. Not ‘til this is all over. Get off this bloody island alive and I can break down as much as I want-- they’d have to let me after a bloodbath like this, excuse it as shell shock, without the shells. But hell, it’s still my war, isn’t it? Seeing men and women I’ve only barely known die around me for no reason beyond someone’s sick game? It’s my war, and I’ll be allowed to be shocked by it. Only when it won’t get me killed. Got to hold it together until then.

 

Seton… it’s a distraction, maybe. Trying to pin the blame on the old man now and throw us off his own scent, is that what Lombard wants? I know enough about Seton that it won’t sway me. He might have picked any other hanging and given me pause, but I know enough about Seton.

 

Or maybe it’s not a distraction. Maybe he only wants the full story, of all the names on the record, out of all of us. He’d asked me about Landor, after all. Told him more than I should have if not half what he wanted. 

 

The judge leaves us, after tea. I follow Armstrong, and Miss Claythorne and Lombard fall in behind. Armstrong’s had enough to drink, and if it’s not helping, something else needs to. I use the flame from the candle I’ve carried to light him a cigarette, join him at the window and place it between shaking fingers. 

 

There’s a look passes between us in that moment I can’t half read. There’s nothing dirty in it-- not on his side, and I hope not on mine. Only the sense he might cling to me. Not physically-- nothing like that, not for a moment like that. Only that there’s the same gratitude in it I once felt for Reg, that’s all. And it’s a good feeling to be on the other end of that look for once in my life. 

 

There’s no words. I’m afraid of what I’d say if I tried. At best I’d only sound stupid. I can’t stay near him, I can’t be close to him or I imagine my hand on his chest now… I move to a chair and leave him to his miseries and me to mine. Leave us all to our separate miseries. 

 

Lombard may have been taking the piss with us before, me and Armstrong, but he’s all earnest about the judge now. And I’m willing to entertain him. Maybe I wouldn’t have been if we’d all been in the room together. But I can’t lock myself into suspecting Lombard and overlook any clues otherwise. Done that with Rogers and look where it got us, after all.

 

The only question is if the man’s physically capable, but we can’t subject him to a… a physical exam, we’d all have to take one to be fair about it and it wouldn’t be right, putting a lady through that without a nurse present for propriety’s sake, and anyway wouldn’t be anyone qualified to examine Armstrong, and if he got his hands on me I don’t know what… but it’s all crazy talk anyway. Searches, that made sense enough to search all of us, but a physical. 

 

I’m physically capable, and no one else can be sure I ain’t done it. Lombard’s physically capable, and he’s morally bankrupt. Armstrong… of course he could, even under that softness, he’s strong enough, but is he capable of doing it? I still don’t see it. Wargrave… maybe he could. The theme of justice, the ‘prisoners at the bar’, and maybe he could, in his soul, in his head, but could he have done Rogers? MacArthur? And could Miss Claythorne have, on either count?

 

My head’s ready to split open and I don’t realize the reason for it until Armstrong shouts at Miss Claythorne and I realize the noise isn’t in my head, it’s her, and there’s a blessed stop to it, but only for a moment.

 

Maybe at first she didn’t realize she were doing it, but when she starts back up it’s just to punish him, and I think about smashing the sodding glass against the wall, but I don’t make a move towards her that might be mistaken for personal violence. No matter how much I want the bloody noise to stop. She don’t need to be so petty to him, no matter how he’s been to her all weekend. Man’s a wreck as it is, driving him to the next drink, that’s… But maybe we should call it a night before anyone needs another.

 

She hasn’t gone long before the scream, and it hits me maybe it is Wargrave-- maybe he’s never needed the cane, maybe he’s recovered entirely and he’s as strong as any man might be, and he’s played us all. 

 

It’s not Wargrave-- it’s not anything. But I leave the others with the lamp and her candle-- three and one and one, just as we were when she went up, perfectly fine. Back down to the nearest liquor cabinet, and back up with a snifter of brandy she knocks right out of my bleeding hand, so excuse me for trying. 

 

Lombard’s no kind of help, egging her on. As if I’d-- as if I’d poison her right in front of the other two like that if I was the killer! As if I’d be so stupid as to do it with two witnesses who could easily work together to overpower me… as if I weren’t trying to do the decent thing in spite of her being less than decent to me today. As if I haven’t always been perfectly decent-- angry a little, once or twice, but perfectly decent! I done my best to be!

 

Armstrong pulls me over for a sidebar, his breath in my ear. Stinking of one drink too many or more, but warm… I could like the warmth more than I might take against the boozing. 

 

Personally I don’t think it’s any great surprise, Lombard being familiar with her. He’s looked her over enough. A handsome man and a young lady in a situation like this, maybe a bit of it’s only natural, at least it’s only natural him trying it on, the way he’s been…

 

I move away, when Lombard gets back. I should have moved away before, but I do when I hear him in the corridor anyway. Should never have let Armstrong stand so close to me, the thoughts it puts in my head now. And me not knowing how to put a stop to them…

 

Resent the implication he thinks I’m idiot enough to have poisoned her in front of the others more than I resent her knocking the glass away. Anyone might have on instinct, after Marston and then Mrs. Rogers and all, but to go on acting like I’m not just the killer, but a bloody stupid killer… Going on about an unopened bottle, like that makes it tamper-proof. Killer could just as easily stick a syringe full of poison through a cork, even one that’s been sealed in place with wax, nothing in this house is safe doesn’t come out of a tin or the tap, and even then you pays your money and you takes your chances. You take your chances with everything in life, and here more than most places. But as long as I’m not in easy reach of Armstrong, as long as he doesn’t see us…

 

He would never know what’s in my head. He’d have to be one of them to see it, the way Landor saw it. Landor saw it before I ever let myself see it, and he paid for it with his life. But if Lombard could see that in me, he’d have seen it when we were out on the cliffs. He’d have seen it when he pressed me about Landor.

 

There’s a hook in the ceiling. Sort you hang a chandelier from, though when I say as much, Lombard snorts over it. In this house I’m half surprised there’s not one in the lav, anyway. 

 

“Well, it’s posh people, innit?” I shake my head. “Put a chandelier anywhere. Put a chandelier in a pigsty, if the fancy took ‘em.”

 

He laughs at that, a bit. Half a smile might take Miss Claythorne, wouldn’t know if it did or not in the dark, but Armstrong’s not amused. Well, he’s the only one of us what is posh, even if it’s only middle-class posh. I half want to tell him not to take any offense by it, that I don’t mean him, but I can’t single him out with kindness now…

 

I could give him the chance to take the bottle from me after I’ve had my pull, though.

 

“I’m becoming very fond of you, tubs.” Lombard says. I don’t know if I believe him and I don’t know if I want to. But I’m beginning to know why I took so hard against him from the start, beyond the air of untrustworthiness. Why I took against Marston. And why I took against Armstrong-- oh, for being too like Reg, yes, but…

 

He takes the bottle and I push the thought back out of my head. All three of them were something I’m not… something I thought I could fake my way through being for a weekend, in different ways. Something I’ve maybe always wanted to be a little. And in Armstrong’s case… I can’t think about what I want. But I can rise to the bait Lombard’s set me, and that’s safe.

 

“You’re an arrogant arsehole, you.” I sneer, before immediately clapping my hand to my mouth. “Bloody hell, sorry, Miss Claythorne.”

 

“No, you’re right, he’s an arsehole.” She does laugh, this time.

 

If I’d met her any place but here, under any other circumstances, I suppose I’d have simply liked her. Not the way Lombard does, not with any leering looks, not with any desire. Never have stepped out with her, even if I were a few years younger. But we might have gotten along, without this.

 

I don’t think I would have, with Lombard, not under any circumstances. Not without something hard and unfriendly under the surface between us. And I know… I know if I hadn’t been posh first, hadn’t been Davis, and hadn’t done my best to just carry on through it all, Armstrong wouldn’t have looked twice at me. Not that he looks at me any special way. But we wouldn’t be friends in the real world… away from this place. Maybe I should wish we never met, if it would mean not being here… or if even one of us didn’t come, if it would mean I’d be free of these thoughts of him.

 

Armstrong’s the only one not laughing. Then Armstrong asks about the judge, and I hadn’t gave Wargrave a second thought since Miss Claythorne turned out to be unharmed. But we move as a group anyway and then we find him. 

 

Bloody hell, do we find him. 

 

The splatter don’t line up unless the shooter was crawling along the floor and there’s something off. There’s something off about the smell. Blood, yeah, straight off I smell blood, and something worse. Brains, I imagine. But something’s wrong. 

 

Lombard stops Armstrong panicking and using his jacket to keep the judge’s head in one place. Which is good and all, it’d be a shame ruining as nice a jacket.

 

It had to have been Lombard. When he went down to get a bottle no one had opened before, it had to have been him. We all watched Miss Claythorne go up to her room, and I know I ain’t done it, it could only have been Lombard.

 

Leastaways this time Armstrong pushes down on his panic and mans up a bit, takes Wargrave’s upper half and I pick up his legs, feeling like I’m waiting for something that just doesn’t come. It’s a solemn trip up the stairs, but we get the man laid out and covered.

 

“You went back downstairs to get the bottle.” I accuse Lombard, moment we’re out of the room. Don’t seem right to get in a brawl over the deceased, but I get myself ready to brawl if it comes to it. 

 

“You went downstairs, too.” He argues, but he doesn’t run for it and he doesn’t look like he’s spoiling for a fight. “To get a glass of brandy. And _ you _ . You disappeared for a bit.”

 

He rounds on Armstrong, but Armstrong only went as far as his room, I passed him when I went for the brandy. He couldn’t have been gone long enough. Only Lombard could have been, if he’d hurried. Miss Claythorne couldn’t have made it up and down the stairs in time between us leaving her be behind her closed door and hearing the screams. Lombard’s fit, though. Scampered up and down the slope by the cliffs quick enough and berated me for not keeping up, he could make it in time.

 

“To fetch my bag, so that I could attend to-- to  _ Vera _ .” Armstrong throws that in Lombard’s face, though not to great effect.

 

“We didn’t hear the shot.” I add. That’s not all that bothers me, but it’s all I can put a name to. 

 

“You could have muffled it, with a cushion.” Lombard says, to me and to Armstrong both, at this point, him looking to one of us then the other.

 

“Well we’ll have to take your word for it.” Armstrong says, and he really has found his cool now, he has. “I’ve never shot a man in the head, that’s all your field of expertise.”

 

Now that he’s calm, I feel edgy again, punchy. Can’t put my finger on what it is if it’s not the lack of a gunshot bothered me.

 

I should go down and look for a cushion, a bloody cushion. It would have to be there, there’d… No, there’d be feathers about, wouldn’t there? And the judge, he’d look different. The wound had been neat, not smeared, for all I saw it in the dark. And you can’t shoot from the floor through a cushion, can you? But we were all together when it thundered, so it couldn’t have been the killer waiting for the thunder to cover it. Only maybe it had been worse and I’m forgetting another crack. Never was a peal of thunder didn’t line up with the lightning, but if the killer timed it right, maybe. I just don’t remember thunder when we weren’t all together.

 

The last thing I need is to be admiring Armstrong’s cool, of all people, so why am I now? Because I’ve lost the plot, that’s why, but he’s doing just fine. And there’s nothing I want more when I haven’t got the answers than a man who can make it all right again. There never has been.

 

“When would I have had the time to go downstairs, grab a bottle of brandy, quickly put a slug in Wargrave, making sure that nobody heard, and dress him up and make it back upstairs again?” Lombard demands. “Tubs here was away for longer!”

 

“I’m not as quick on my feet as you.” I remind him, much as the old pride doesn’t like it.

 

Armstrong’s cool slips away, which perhaps restores the natural order of things, but I’m not happy about it. 

 

Lombard’s on about his gun, except he’s the only one who could have had it, the only one who could have done it, and then Miss Claythorne’s off and the rest of us got to fall in line. Now that the judge is seen to, we could make a proper search for the gun again, but I don’t know if that’s for the best. Too easy for Lombard to wrestle it away if I found it, or if Armstrong did, he’s not sharp enough to fight for it. Too much chance of it going off if there were a struggle.

 

We catch up to her, and the figures. Four of them now, even Armstrong couldn’t argue someone’s doing it… He sticks close to me, and a part of me wants him closer. The warmth of him, on a night like this one. And I know I shouldn’t, but I still don’t make a move to put any more distance between us. 

 

He’s unraveling again and there’s nothing I can do… We can’t go off two and two-- I’m sure of Lombard now and I couldn’t let that happen to Miss Claythorne. No one else had the time… I can’t take Armstrong off alone for even a moment to try and reassure him, and I don’t know what I’d do if I could. Haven’t got another cigarette on me, and do I really want to put another drink in his hand tonight? There’s nothing else I can offer, I’m not good with words like to comfort a man. Suppose I put a hand on his shoulder to say it’d be all right and that hand kept going?

 

In the end I find more cigarettes, and I do put another drink in his hand, and the phonograph’s set up, bloody ‘Happy Feet’, and where Lombard got the cocaine was supposed to be evidence… must’ve nicked it searching for the gun. Must’ve nicked it then.

 

I’ve never in my life done a thing like this. And it supposing to be evidence in the death of Marston-- well, no matter, Marston was murdered, weren’t the coke. Never in my life done a thing like this, and yet Armstrong makes it sound just fine. And maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea, a stimulant. He’s got a point about using it to keep awake, I just have to be able to stay awake longer than Lombard, and he’s had some. 

 

Armstrong’s had too much of everything, by the time I work up the nerve to try any at all. Can’t bring myself to snort it like they have, just rub it on my gums and light a cigarette. Dunno if it’s a good idea or a poor one. Seems like it won’t work as direct this way and maybe that’s for the best, I only need to stay awake, after all. Can take a fingerful at a time this way for as long as I need to… check into a quiet hospital after and get cleaned up, say I need a rest cure after the bloodbath. 

 

I’m not sure if it’s done anything or if it’s only numbed me, though. Cigarette and a drink chases the taste of it away fine, and next to the others it seems like it’d do me no particular harm to take a little more already. Armstrong’s far gone and Lombard’s doing his best to catch up, and Miss Claythorne’s no slouch herself, and I might as well. Oh, bugger me, I might as well. 

 

Maybe tonight’s all I get, now. Maybe it’s just as well if it is. I don’t deserve to carve a happy ending out of this, maybe the best I can do’s a happy end. Won’t feel no pain when it comes, like this. I’m not such a bad man I deserve a painful end, even if I’m not such a good one I deserve to make it out of this… I mean, I can say that much, can’t I? We’re all wolves in sheep’s clothing, and some of those sheepskins are wearing tight, that’s all. 

 

Some point I start laughing, and he asks me what for, but he is, too, Armstrong. Not that strangled tittering laugh from when he laughed at me, but a full laugh, a good laugh, and I do laugh with him. I can’t help but laugh with him and him with me, and I could die tonight but I can’t remember ever being so happy

 

We listen to both sides of the record, Happy Feet and some bloody… Charleston or something, some old dance number like that, before someone puts on Swan Song. Seems like a bad joke but somehow it comes off a good one, we’re certainly whooping it up. Put on hats and everyone’s got drinks and drinks and drinks, and Armstrong’s name is called and he all but takes a bow, and so then we all do it, and there’s drinks and drinks and I slump into a chair somewhere after giving myself a bump on the head I don’t know how, and I look up to the sweetest sight I ever saw.

 

It’s only Armstrong. I know it’s only Armstrong, after the fog clears a bit. Only for a moment, it had been Reg standing over me and offering me his hand. Come to take me to heaven, if I made the cut. Or maybe to hell, maybe he’s gone to hell for covering it up for me, but I’d walk into hell with my eyes wide open if I had Reg’s hand to hold.

 

I loved him. 

 

Oh, I loved him. As deep as any man could be loved, I loved him! He were everything to me, not just… not just some mentor, never just my superior, but everything. If he told me a thing would be all right, then it would, and if he called me Billy Boy and tousled my hair, the only reason for not liking it were I liked it too much! And even if a molotov cocktail hadn’t rolled under his car on his holiday, he’d have a wife and he’d never want nothing dirty from me, I’d never be in his arms the way I wished I could be.

 

Edward Armstrong offers me his hand, though, and I take it. He whirls me around the room, I fit into his arms as neat as anything and he whirls me around to the next record was put on.

 

Could I call him Edward? Was he Ed or Eddie or Ted, even? If we both got out of this place alive, would we be close? We’d have to be, if we survived a thing like this… got off Soldiers’ Island and back to London… I wouldn’t ask much of him. He wouldn’t do this sober… and I wouldn’t give him a drink if he were drying himself out, just to be allowed it. But if he came to me… if he came to me and said ‘do you remember…?’, I’d tell him yes. 

 

He whirls me around the room and the room whirls around me and my gums still tingle and I don’t feel the ache in my head anymore, or feel my feet touch the floor, though I hear them. Thundering clumsy along in his wake, I hear them just fine and I know it’s me, but I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anything isn’t his arm around me and his hand holding mine and the way our bodies bump together sometimes when we can’t keep the rhythm right. 

 

He’d call me up in London, if we both made it back. Suppose we’d be in papers, the survivors. Maybe even the survivors what foiled the Owen killer and saved a young lady besides. Maybe even that. Dunno if Miss Claythorne would care to keep in touch, to remember, but I can just imagine it, Edward Armstrong calling me up. Invite me to come up to his office sometime, and I’d say yes, I’d say it’d be good to talk again. Good to be around the one man who truly understands. 

 

We’d laugh over this moment. But we wouldn’t laugh over everything. We wouldn’t laugh over the searches… the way he’d sidled up to me and helped me make my bed, and oh so carefully suggested what I might hide under my mattress. Oh, he did suss me out then, didn’t he? Saw me looking, and saw me too quick to look away. You don’t look away so quick if you ain’t tempted to look some more. So he saw me then, but he… 

 

Even if it’s not sober, even if it’s only when we could die any moment, he wanted me. Wants me enough for this. 

 

There’s only two or three records, but I don’t get tired of the same songs over again. Even when Armstrong lets me go, I don’t get tired of it, though I don’t quite let go of him right away.

 

“Eddie, what’s’matter?” I lean up, slur into his ear, giggle at the way my own voice sounds. 

 

“Just going to top myself up.” He gets himself disengaged and leaves me to dance, I see him go back to the table, to the little tin. Have we gone through it fast? How many times have I topped up?

 

Numbers don’t make sense to me now, but I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again. Time’s a bloody illusion. The music’s good and that’s all that matters, and I’m not even keeping an eye on Lombard, I’ve forgotten everything except how good this feels. Why did I never go out dancing before? Why’ve I never danced? I’m a natural dancer… I ought to have been dancing my whole life. I wasted so many years not dancing!

 

I’m back in his arms by the time I do start flagging. Still dancing when I start to fall asleep, which I suppose means I need another hit of the marching powder, only to top up I’d need to leave him… He’s holding me so tight it don’t matter if tomorrow never comes, his arms keeping me upright. Armstrong. With the strong arms. Gripping at me, and his chest all broad and warm. Smelling of booze and sweat and aftershave, cigarettes. Ought to be rank, all together like that, but it’s not. 

 

I don’t want to wake from this. Suppose I wake and he’s only gripping my shoulder, standing over me while I’m passed out on a sofa somewhere, trying to tell me Lombard’s got Miss Claythorne while we were distracted? Suppose I wake and he’s not interested in holding me close, in wanting me…

 

Lombard has got Miss Claythorne, but only as much as Armstrong’s got me. I’ll call him Edward when it’s all over, and maybe he’ll invite me to call him something more familiar… invite me up to his office in the nice part of town and maybe he’d take me in his arms again for old time’s sake… Maybe I’d rest my hand against his chest and he’d let me, and maybe we’d… for old time’s sake, maybe there’d be something between us now and then. And he’d whisper in my ear like this, and his hand tight around my shoulder, and the feeling of being safe… of being wanted.

 

Except…

 

Except all he wants to whisper in my ear about is them. Them being in on it together. Well, maybe so. I’ve come down hard off my high, found myself daydreaming in Armstrong’s arms and all he wants is use me to spy on Lombard and Miss Claythorne, and suppose he never did mean to suggest anything to me at all?

 

He wouldn’t want me sober. He barely wants me while he’s flying. Fool I’ve been… and now Lombard’s seen me dancing with another man, him and Miss Claythorne both. Supposing… supposing three of us do get off this island, anyone could hear I’d… anyone could say what I done tonight. An officer of the law, taking cocaine and falling into another man’s arms, swooning even!

 

And… oh, bugger me, and that’s not even the whole of it, put on a ladies’ hat and danced with a man, and him leading every time, and sure it’s only because he’s taller and he asked me first and I never really danced before, but the picture I make! The fool he’s made of me!

 

“Why am I wearing this fucking hat?” I throw it down. And Lombard and Miss Claythorne are staring now, but let them. Let them think every moment of it were only the drugs. Well, now I’ve come to my senses! Won’t be made a mockery of anymore!

 

“I’m going to sleep.” I list towards him again, fight to right myself, to pull away. To put enough of a sneer into everything, make it clear I find it all very distasteful. Very distasteful, now I’m sobered up again. “This party’s over.”

 

I stagger out, but he comes too close behind me.

 

“Blore, wait!” He calls, that lost lamb voice again, but I don’t turn back for him. I don’t stop my stride for him one bit. And he don’t make any kind of an apology to me, he don’t say another word once the others join us in heading back upstairs. He don’t try to be an inch more familiar with me than the first night.

 

He catches my eye from the end of the hallway, though, before I can turn and go to my room. I can’t bear to read what’s in his face when he does, but he catches my eye and he holds my gaze a moment. Lombard could pull out his gun and shoot Miss Claythorne now right between the two of us and I’d hardly notice. 

 

It’s only a moment. I turn away and break that spell after only a moment, and if he stood in his doorway all night I’d be none the wiser, in my own room.

 

I’m barely undressing for bed when the soft knock comes, and I open the door to him. Stupidest thing I done yet… stupidest thing I could’ve done. Supposing it were Lombard? Supposing it were Miss Claythorne with Lombard’s gun, to force me down to the cliffs and off into the sea? That’s what’s next, isn’t it? Sea, then three.

 

But of course it isn’t them. Of course it’s Armstrong. He slips in-- if I’d tried to stop him I don’t think I could have, he’s in so fast, door closing silent behind him.

 

“Blore, I’m sorry.” He says in a rush, in a whisper.

 

“Don’t be.” I shrug him off when he reaches for me. And there’s that look of betrayal again, as if he didn’t use me… 

 

“I’ve upset you.”

 

“Everything on this island’s upset me. Forget about it. Go to bed.”

 

“Of course. Well. Of course I’d… I’d have to be back in my own room before dawn.” He hesitates a moment, looks me over. I can see the gears turn, the question of if he can trust me with some secret part of him. It shuts down like a no, but he reaches for me again, like a yes. 

 

“Of course you’d have to be.” I nod. 

 

His hand wraps around my arm, warm and certain and strong. My other arm comes up around his neck, my hand fists in his shirt and his other arm around me, around my waist. He hefts me up, my feet just an inch off the ground but we’re so close to the bed as it is… He don’t carry me all the way to it, or carry me at all, but we drag each other there and we pull each other down.

 

Between nerves and all the drinking, it’s a blur. I don’t think we got properly hard, not enough to do much with. I don’t think he ever did kiss my lips, but his mouth was still on me. His mouth was on me, on my neck and through my shirt down my chest, until he pushed my shirt out of the way and then he was on me… and me on him. I had my hands in his hair, and it hurt to think how I might have let myself wish I could smooth it when it had been in disarray, before. It hurt to think at all. 

 

I don’t remember by the time we’ve come to a stop what did and didn’t occur between us. There’s no mess, only sweat and a few places where a kiss got wet on someone’s skin. So maybe neither of us did get to finish. It weren’t sex, not sex-sex, but there was passion in it and there was tenderness. And so what if he wouldn’t have looked at me if we’d never been brought here? Here we are! Here we are, and he’s done more than look!

 

It comes to a natural stop, the rolling about and the touching, and the mouthing at throat or chest or along an arm. It comes to a natural stop somehow and it’s a blur the moment it’s over, but I wonder if it couldn’t happen again. If we make it. Without the boozing and without the nerves-- with less of the nerves. It’s nerves for me, never having done such a thing before. Barely allowing myself to think it before it’s gone and happened to me. But I wouldn’t be so nervous next time.

 

He dresses quick, turns as I come to kiss him at the door and I get his neck again, and he turns back and he gets the side of my face, and gives me an awkward smile. 

 

“Just watch yourself tonight… the storm’ll break, the boat’ll come.” He nods. “Yeah?”

 

“Yeah. And you.”

 

“Don’t worry about me.” His hand comes up, cups my cheek a moment before sliding down to my chest. “Watch yourself until we’re out of here, that’s all you’ve got to do. That’s all anyone’s got to do.”

 

I barely bother fixing the clothes I’d been wearing before I fall back into bed. I fall back into bed and deep into sleep and there’s Landor with his skinny limbs and wide eyes. And it’s no strange fantasy, it’s… and there I am with him, and not much… not much more a man than him. In my waking memories, there’s more difference between us. In this dream, watching from outside myself and unable to stop me, if he’d fought back at all it would have been different.

 

From outside, unable to stop it, I see things I didn’t see then. I see how I let my knee touch his, and I didn’t ever have to. I didn’t have to do that. No, I moved into him and not the other way around, and my hand could’ve touched his knee with just a slip. 

 

This can’t be my memories. I can’t have got so close to him… I can’t have said the things I hear myself say. I can’t have smiled like that, I’d have never… I’d have died before I called that boy a peach.

 

But I had touched him. I hadn’t asked him for anything. I wouldn’t have known how to ask him back then. But I’d touched him. That was my first mistake, that was where he saw what I wasn’t ready to see… when I’d touched him friendly-like and smiled, joked a bit maybe-- was it really like this?-- and he’d… Yes. He’d smiled, cautious, and his cheeks pink, and he didn’t meet my eye a moment and if he’d just kept on not meeting my eye, it could’ve been different. If he’d only kept looking down, if I had never seen that knowing in him...

 

No.

 

No, I should have been man enough to shrug it off when he did. I should have been in control, mad or not. Because when he did meet my eye, and I knew in that moment what he thought of me… that I was looking out for my own, I should have looked out for my own… it were only ever my choice to make. I let it be buried so long, I let it get twisted up in my own head just to be able to live day to day, but I done what I done and I could’ve done different… I could’ve let him recognize me.

 

I wake up, not yet dawn even after all last night’s revelry, in a cold sweat from the dream. However much of it’s real memory, it’s not the version I let Reg tell me, not the version I lived with. It’s realer than that. I did touch him, and it weren’t a sexual touch, but it were a longing. Not for Landor… for what he represented to me. For the idea of touching a man just because you could and because he might welcome it. Even just a passing touch. Oh, I was touched sometimes, sure. Reg were like that with us all and it’s not like the lads never threw an arm about your shoulders, and there was hair-tousling and soft little rabbit-punches to the shoulder with broad grins, and if you’d had a hard day out there there was always someone would put his hand in the center of your back and let you hide away a moment with your forehead against the wall, and he’d shield you from the world a while. There was always touch but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t charged the same way and I never let myself start it.

 

I touched him because he was safe to reach for, only for a soft moment, nothing more than friendly, but it were enough, and I couldn’t take the consequences of it. He never pushed me for anything or acted as if I’d coerced something out of him I didn’t mean to… he never touched me back any way he shouldn’t have, or breathed a word of what he might have thought, so why couldn’t I have let it go?

 

Sound pulls me from the downward spiral of reawoken memories. Footsteps… I wait until they pass me, there’s no one past me going that way, I wait a good while, enough I won’t be startling a killer within arm’s reach. 

 

And then I see him, running downstairs in a hurry, and there’s nothing to be in such a hurry for… Edward.

 

Armstrong.

 

What was last night, then? What was that soft kiss to the side of my head, that smile? What was that warning, the honest-sounding concern? From the start I thought he couldn’t possibly, have I let this… this attraction, this feeling, have I let it blind me from the start? I didn’t even like him from the start… 

 

The one man I never for a moment suspected, but what else could it be?

 

I go to get Lombard. Suppose I’ve misjudged him as well, though I can’t quite summon up guilt for it.

 

Been made a fool of… wanted so much to think there could be something there, even a passing thing, but he’s only ever been playing me, using me. Figured I was good for a quick tumble before the game was over, did he?

 

We search the island as best we can, but there’s no sign of him. I don’t know what I hoped for, really… Hoped I would be the one to find him, hoped he would give me some answer that would make it all right, what he done to me. That he made me feel some kind of way about him and done this.

 

Lombard’s armed again, back at the house, and even if Armstrong is Owen, I don’t like it. Paranoia’s built up too much in us all for a weapon to be back in play, and like Armstrong would just leave it for him, if it weren’t some kind of a trap?

 

And when his name comes up, I can’t bear to hear it. It makes me snappish, more nervy than ever. Twitchy, even, and I don’t want them seeing me twitch. Don’t want them thinking about why, about how Armstrong’s got under my skin since last night. Would either of them remember it?

 

“Did you find him?” I accuse Lombard. Traitor heart still wants it to be Lombard. For there to be some other reason Armstrong ran out like that. “You chuck him off the cliff?”

 

I really am twitching now… can’t keep myself steady. But I can see it in my mind’s eye, the struggle, and Lombard, and Armstrong… 

 

“No, tubs, I didn’t find him and chuck him off the cliff. Did you?”

 

“No!” It comes out louder than I mean it to, stronger. Hold yourself together, hold yourself together and don’t let it sound like he means something to you because of one bloody night… Maybe we wouldn’t have had much together, but… it still meant something, and he meant something, for what we had… I look away, can’t meet anyone’s eyes now, not thinking of Armstrong, not thinking of whatever much we had. “No.”

 

Can just picture Lombard chucking him off the cliff and it’s enough to make me want to go at him, but he’s got the gun and at this point I’m only lying to myself. Miss Claythorne, she brings up he’s still alive out there, the red herring, but somehow it’s easier to think of him dead than to think of him betraying me like this. Holding me close all the while knowing he’d planned to kill me… And I lash out at her, and at Lombard, and I wish it were true, I wish I had never sobered up, but nothing sobers a man up like realizing he’s been used.

 

I really could have a go at him, if he didn’t have that gun back… I really could. I’m half tempted to do it anyway, knowing how it’d end…

 

“Your first name’s William, isn’t it?” Miss Claythorne asks. Unexpected enough to snap me out of things, if just a little. “Do you get Will, or…?”

 

“Bill.” I shrug. I can’t be having this conversation. I can’t be. And I’ll give her ‘Bill’, but she won’t get ‘Billy Boy’, nor Lombard, no one’s going to hear that one from me now that Reg is gone. But I been Bill to everyone else. Never did have the chance to be just Bill to Armstrong. Never got the chance to know what he was, between close friends. But then, we were never close friends, were we? “I get Bill.”

 

“Well, Bill, whose idea was it to put music on? To get drunk so we’d all pass out and not hear anything?”

 

“Armstrong.” I answer. But he’d fallen so far off the wagon how was I to suspect? He’d gone harder than any of us… 

 

“And who did you first suspect?” Lombard presses. “Who did you get the scent on, right from the off?”

 

There’s a pang. More from feeling the fool than from heartbreak. I got no right to have my heart broken by a man I barely knew. But I’d written off every wrong feeling I’d had about him from the start, made excuses to myself… said I only took against him on account of he wasn’t Reg, looked too much like a younger version of him. But maybe I should have trusted an instinct I told myself was only a bit of prejudice. 

 

“Armstrong.” I say. I never suspected him for this, and I should have. All the times I excused something I shouldn’t have… all the times I told myself this feeling I had about him was some petty thing, the times I let those sad eyes rob me of all reason… I should have been suspecting Armstrong from the start. And I won’t admit I was blinded, not like this.

 

I close my eyes. I think of him standing there. He got the scent on me, too, as I stood there in my towel and tried not to look at him, him in his robe, and he come over to me… he knew what he was doing with me all along. Cozying up to me, making me second guess myself, making me protect him. I protected him…

 

I protected him, comforted him. Lit his sodding cigarette for him, and he was manipulating me the whole while. If I’d done my job right…

 

But that’s my problem, isn’t it? I don’t do my job right. I let feelings get in the way of things. I fly off the handle and I see what I want to see sometimes, and I don’t do what I ought. If I’d done what I ought, with Landor, I’d never have been here, never have been that man’s plaything, and we’re all in worse danger on account of me and my weakness…

 

“I’ve got an allotment at home.” I say. My turn to be the lost lamb. Armstrong never really was, was he? Just a master manipulator. And he wouldn’t have called on the likes of me if we made it home. He was never going to let me make it home. 

 

“In Edmonton.” I add, when she says nothing, nor Lombard either. I can’t take silence now. I don’t know why, but I can’t take the silence, and it comes pouring out of me. I never should have bothered thinking of more, when I’m blessed enough. Should have chuckled that letter in the bin… “I love it. It’s my little patch of paradise. That’s the best thing in the world, just sitting there, watching it all… growing away. Cup of tea from the flask and a bit of bread and a bit of cheese and a… radish that you pulled from the ground a moment before. Great bit peppery radish.”

 

I had been such a fool. Not just coming here thinking I needed more than my pension would get me. Not just that. But thinking Armstrong, thinking we could be real. Thinking he could want the same things as make me happy. Can’t picture him pulling weeds. Can’t picture him content with this sort of life, nor willing to hear me blathering on about things that’d bore him.

 

I’m near in tears thinking of it. Of what I’ve lost because I thought I could raise myself up this way. Of what I gave a man who’s been plotting against me from the start. Of what I’ve done, every mistake. Not only coming here, but every mistake, back to letting Reg take care of me when I should have paid for my crime-- back to the fact I done it to begin with. I could have had a nice life, unassuming. Good. I could’ve had that, and I thrown it away.

 

“Simple things.” I push on. No one stops me. “Good things. I wish I’d chucked that letter from Ulich Norman Owen in the bin. And it serves me right. Trying to earn a bit of cash on the sly.”

 

“Serves us all right.” Lombard says, only he’s never… he’s never once sounded sorry for his crimes and he don’t sound half sorry now. He don’t know… 

 

At this point, what’s the harm in his knowing? What I really done… what’s the harm in their knowing? What’s the use of keeping secrets when I’m only going to die here, at the hands of the man I helped along each step of the way without realizing it. I did, didn’t I? Looked out for him, hid things for him. Not big things, they didn’t seem. Not important things. But he played me into the role of his protector when we weren’t after each other as the killer. He played on my sympathies whenever he found them.

 

I can’t imagine… I can’t imagine a worse hell than to feel all this guilt, all this shame, and to give myself over to a man, only to learn he’s hunting me for some kind of bloody sport, that I was a tool to him… but I can’t imagine, after Landor, that I don’t deserve it. Maybe that’s what this really is… or maybe I’m not so sober as I thought, but once the idea’s in my head I can’t shake it.

 

“Are we dead already?”

 

“What?” Miss Claythorne looks up from the table at me, sharp and startled. 

 

“Perhaps we’re dead already and we just don’t realize it.” I explain, and the more I put words to it the righter it feels, the more it’s everything I deserve… I’m shaking with the realization, or with coming down from the cocaine, it hardly matters which when it feels like this. It feels like being dead, only still feeling too much. “And this is hell. We’re in hell. And we’re being punished for what we done. ‘Cause I did kill him. Landor.”

 

There’s no point in keeping secrets now, and someone has to hear my confession, don’t they? Someone must. I’m too close to weeping now… I’m too close to weeping, but I push on, because I got no choice. Even in hell, I’ve got to have the chance to confess to someone.

 

It feels wrong to say his name, it always has. But it’s not the fear of discovery anymore that makes it feel this way. It’s that I snuffed him out and I shouldn’t have. It’s that I can’t make myself hate him any longer or pretend it was all right.

 

“I stomped him ‘til he was pulp. His own mother couldn’t see him. Couldn’t say goodbye.” And Miss Claythorne looks at me with pity more than judgment, it seems like, but I can’t feel any pity for myself. Just loathing for what I done and who I’ve been. “I murdered him, all right. He was helpless and I-- I didn’t stop.”

 

Just hearing myself say it, I could be sick. In my mind’s eye I see it how it really happened… and I see it a few ways it didn’t. Always bad ways. And I don’t want any sodding pity, not for what I done, not for the man I was and maybe the man I am. I push on-- I push on confessing, and I’ll keep pushing on until I’m met with the judgment I deserve. Until the picture’s clear enough there won’t be pity left for me.

 

“Must have been so frightened.” I blink back tears, can’t stop quivering myself to think of him. Skinny limbs and doe eyes, and he were so unsure, and then I did what I done to him, and I can’t stop quivering, shaking really. I may never stop again. I’ll die trembling and it’ll serve me right. “Just a young lad.”

 

And so was I, compared to today, but I made my choices at least and I got this far making bad ones, and he never… And I can’t stop myself, and I don’t care anymore how Miss Claythorne looks at me or what kind of a man Lombard takes me for. I can’t stop the sobs tearing out of my chest. If I’ve ruined my own life, I’m the one’s got to pay for it, but I stole his… I stole his, and then even if it never got to be as such, I still tasted pleasures I robbed him of forever. With a killer, sure, but I tasted them. I danced in another man’s arms and I’ve got raw marks still down my chest from his mustache when he kissed me, I done all that but I had to take away Landor’s life.

 

“I’ve got a tomato crop that’s got to be harvested. Who’s gonna do that?” I blubber away, practically nonsense. How important are my tomatoes, compared to everyone’s life? But they’ve got their little lives going to waste now, too, no one weeding and watering, no one culling the fruit here and there to let the strongest meet their potential, no one looking out for bugs… “Who’s… what’s gonna happen to my allotment?”

 

I can’t stop shaking, and I can’t think of anything on earth that could stop me. Not exactly going to be breaking into Armstrong’s medicine bag for one of his sedatives, no matter what the labels say. I’d checked those labels myself but I didn’t check inside each bottle to see the contents matched what I’d expect to see. 

 

Even Reg couldn’t stop me shaking now, because now I’ve tasted Armstrong, and now I’ve tainted what memories I’ve got of Reg. Maybe those memories deserve to be tainted. Maybe he helped send me to hell when he covered up what I done, but it couldn’t have stopped me loving him then. 

 

“Hey. Hey, come on, tubs.” Lombard starts, and I don’t even hear what comes next, I don’t hear over my own sobbing, and I don’t even care he’s called me ‘tubs’ again. 

 

Maybe there’s affection of a sort in it by now. What we’ve been through. Dunno what I think about that, but maybe there is. Maybe, after this, after Armstrong, after being betrayed… maybe I feel some sort of affection for him, too. Just for making it this far with me. 

 

He says something about fighting, and she says about someone coming for us, and I scrub at my eyes and pull myself as together as I can. 

 

“Who’s gonna come for us?” I argue. “That Narracott never turned up when he was supposed to. Reckon he was paid off.”

 

“We light a fire on the cliff.” He says, as if he hadn’t shot Armstrong down for that very thing. “Someone’s bound to see it.”

 

And Miss Claythorne’s on board with it as well, but I don’t put a damper on it, I don’t blame her needing to get out of this house, and maybe… Maybe I do feel an affection for Lombard. Because when I say I feel like we’re being watched, he don’t give me bull about it. And there’s something in his eyes makes it easier to pull together. 

 

Lombard’s got his gun, and I’ve got a fireplace poker, which is better than nothing, and I don’t know if Miss Claythorne’s got anything or if she’s just got the signal fire supplies. I’m following behind when I hear footsteps, and it only takes me a moment to come up with a plan.

 

They can still get away. Lombard… whatever he’s done, he could still get a second chance. Not because he’s a good enough man to earn it, but because he could protect Miss Claythorne if I don’t handle Armstrong. And because he did pull me together when I thought it was beyond doing. 

 

She don’t deserve this, for trying her best… for trying and failing. She don’t deserve to be lumped in with killers like us, but here she is. And I could still save her. Her and Lombard. I could try at least. 

 

So I stay behind while they make for the beach, stalking the sound of footsteps. Armstrong… me and him, we deserve each other. Let him come at me however he likes, but he’ll go down with me. For what he done to me, for the mess he did make of my heart, even if it ain’t breaking on his account, he’ll go down with me and me with him. A bloody eternity in hell together to work it out.

 

I must not be sober. That’s the first thought that hits me when I see the bear. That I must not be sober. And then, that it was the smell that was off.

 

I smelled blood and guts, when we found the judge. I smelled only blood and guts. But corpses aren’t so neat and tidy as that. And blood’s the least objectionable smell to come off even a fresh one. 

 

The thought distracts me. If I hit him, I don’t hit him well, and I certainly don’t skewer him, but I’m got. The world whites out as the pain lances through me. When I swim back out of unconsciousness, there’s still a knife in me-- oh joy-- and I’m half under a rug. I swim in and out a bit more. No sign of any non-rug assailant, but my vision’s severely tunneled and I can hardly hear. Everything’s down to pain. 

 

I swim back up one more time, to Lombard standing over me, but I can’t make myself make a sound to alert him. To the danger, or to the fact I’m still alive. Consciousness won’t last long, though… There’s that to fall back on.


End file.
